Recommended
Non-Fiction Reading
On 18th Century
America and the Seven Years’ War
– Plus Some Due Acknowledgements of
Gratitude –
The following tomes, all worthwhile, are among the resources that have
been employed in the creation of The Thomas
Dordrecht Historical Mystery Series. Brief comments are included for some.
Those titles followed by double asterisks have hyperlinks to their more formal
reviews by Jonathan Carriel.
Adair, Douglass, The
Stamp Act in Contemporary English Cartoons. The William and Mary Quarterly,
Third Series, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Oct., 1953).
Anderson, Fred, The Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire
in British North America, 1754–1766.
New York: Vintage Books,
2000.
This superb book served as your present author’s
base history text on the Seven Years’ War.
Anderson’s interpretations and judgments seem eminently reasonable, and
his choices of subjects to examine most appropriate. His later book, The War That Made America,
was the background of a four-hour PBS television series of the same title.
Anderson,
Fred and Andrew Cayton, The Dominion of
War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000. New York: Penguin
Group, 2005.
Andreas, Peter, Smuggler
Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Archer,
Richard, As If an Enemy’s Country: The
British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2010.**
Ball, Edward, Slaves in the Family. New York:
Ballantine Books, 1998.
Bell, J. L., 5
Myths of Tarring and Feathering. Journal of the American Revolution
(December 13, 2013). http://allthingsliberty.com/2013/12/5-myths-tarring-feathering/
Bidwell, Percy W. and Falconer, John I., History
of Agriculture in the Northern United States, Vol. I. 1933.
Bolster, Jeffrey W., Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail. Boston:
Harvard University Press, 1997.
Bonomi, Patricia U., A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1971.
Breen, T.H., The
Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Brook,
Timothy, Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth
Century and the Dawn of the Global World. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008.
Burgess, Douglas R., Jr., The Politics of Piracy: Crime and Civil Disobedience in Colonial America.
University Press of New England, 2014.**
Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Carruth, Gorton, What Happened When: A Chronology
of Life & Events in America. New
York: Harper & Row, 1987.
Chartrand, René, Ticonderoga 1758: Montcalm’s
victory against all odds. Oxford,
UK: Osprey Publishing, Ltd., 2000.
Chopra, Ruma, Unnatural
Rebellion: Loyalists in New York City during the Revolution.
Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 2011.**
Conniff, Michael L. and Davis, Thomas J., Africans
in the Americas: A History of the Black Diaspora. New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Crary, Catherine Snell, John Tabor Kempe’s Rise from Poverty to Riches. The William and
Mary Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2 (April 1957).
Ellis, Edward Robb, The Epic of New York City.
New York: Coward-McCann, 1966.
Elverson, Virginia T., Mary Ann McLanahan, and Betty
T. Duson, Revolutionary Cooking: Over
200 Recipes Inspired by Colonial Meals. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2013.
Fleming, Thomas, What America Was Really Like In 1776. New Word City, Inc., 2012.
Foster, Thomas A., Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of
Sexuality in America. Boston: Beacon
Press, 2006.
Friedenberg, Zachary B., M.D., The Doctor in
Colonial America. Danbury, CT:
Rutledge Books, Inc., 1998.
Gilfoyle, Timothy J., City of Eros: New York City,
Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790–1920. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1992.
Gilje, Paul A., The
Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763-1834. University
of North Carolina Press, 1987.
Gilmore, R. Grant, III, The Archaeology of New World Slave Societies: A Comparative Analysis
with particular reference to St. Eustatius, Netherlands Antilles.
(Unpublished doctoral thesis: Institute of Archaeology, University College
London, 2005).
Gipson, Lawrence Henry, The Great War for the
Empire: The Victorious Years.
1967.
Greenberg, Douglas, Crime and Law Enforcement in
the Colony of New York 1691-1776.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ Press,
1976.
Hart, Albert Bushnell, and Edward Channing, Editors,
The Stamp Act 1765 [full text]. In American History Leaflets: Colonial and
Constitutional. New York: A. Lovell & Company, 1895.
Homberger, Eric, The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of Nearly
400 Years of New York City’s History. New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1994.
Hurst,
Ronald, The Golden Rock: An Episode of
the American War of Independence 1775-1783. Naval Institute Press, 1996.
Irving, Washington, Knickerbocker’s History of
New York. 1809.
Kenney, Alice P., Stubborn For Liberty: The Dutch in New York. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1975.
Kidd, Thomas S., Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots. New York: Basic Books, 2011.**
Kornblum,
William, At Sea in the City: New York
from the Water's Edge. New York, Workman Publishing Co., 2002.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl, The Atlantic in World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
La Boétie, Etienne de, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.
Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008.
Leckie, Robert, “A Few Acres of Snow” – The Saga
of the French and Indian Wars. 1999.
Lowenthal, Larry, Marinus Willett: Defender of
the Northern Frontier. Fleischmanns,
NY: Purple Mountain Press, 2000.
Martin, Joseph Plumb, Private Yankee Doodle:
Being A Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a
Revolutionary Soldier. Written
around 1828, published 1830, re-published 1962 with editing by George E.
Scheer.
Invaluable first-hand
recollection of the way it really was.
McConville, Brendan, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise & Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.**
Morgan,
Edmund S., American Heroes: Profiles of
Men and Women who Shaped Early America. New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2009.**
Morgan,
Edmund S. and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp
Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution. University of North Carolina Press, 1953.
A primary text for Exquisite Folly.
Nash, Gary B., The
Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American
Revolution (abridged). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.
Nash, Gary B., The
Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to
Create America. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.
Patton, Robert H., Patriot Pirates: The Privateer War for Freedom and Fortune in the
American Revolution. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008. **
Pencak, William; Dennis, Matthew; and Newman, Simon
P., editors, Riot and Revelry in Early
America. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press,
2002.
Phelps Stokes, I.N., The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. 1915.
Radune, Richard, Sound Rising: Long Island Sound at the Forefront of America's Struggle
for Independence. Branford, CT: Research in Time Publications, 2011.
Rakove,
Jack, Revolutionaries: A New History of
the Invention of America. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.**
Rice, Kym S., Early
American Taverns: For the Entertainment of Friends and Strangers. Chicago,
IL: Regnery Gateway, 1983.
Ridley, Glynis, The
Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First
Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.
A wonderful, completely
plausible tale reconstructing a Frenchwoman’s unheralded, sparsely documented
circumnavigation in the 1760s.
Ritcheson, Charles R., The Preparation of the Stamp Act. The William and Mary Quarterly,
Vol. 10, No. 4 (Oct. 1953).
Rothbard, Murray, Conceived in Liberty (Vols.
I and II). New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1975.
Russell,
Thaddeus, A Renegade History of the
United States. New York: Free Press, 2010.
Savas,
Theodore P. and J. David Dameron, The
New American Revolution Handbook: Facts and Artwork for Readers of all Ages,
1775-1783. Savas Beattie, 2010.**
Schama, Simon, The
Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. New
York: Random House, 1987.
Shorto, Russell, The
Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the
Forgotten Colony That Shaped America. New York: Doubleday, 2004.
Singleton, Esther, Social New York Under the
Georges: 1714—1776. 1902.
Still, Bayrd, Mirror for Gotham: New York as Seen by Contemporaries from Dutch
Days to the Present. 1980.
Tiedemann, Joseph S., Reluctant Revolutionaries: New York City and the Road to Independence,
1763-1776. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997.
This history provided the
primary source of information regarding the internal politics of New York City
reflected in Exquisite Folly.
Truxes, Thomas M., Defying Empire: Trading with the
Enemy in Colonial New York. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
2008.
By detailing conflicts as they shifted on a
day-to-day basis, Truxes brilliantly involves the reader in the controversies
of the era. This served as the “text” for If
Two Are Dead.
Tuchman,
Barbara W., The First Salute: A View of
the American Revolution. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989.
Tucker, Tom, Bolt
of Fate: Benjamin Franklin and His Electric Kite Hoax. New York: Public
Affairs, 2003. **
Valentine, Alan, Lord Stirling. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
von Mises, Ludwig, Theory and History: An
Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1957.
Washington, George, The Journal of Major George Washington:
An Account of His First Official Mission, Made as Emissary from the
Governor of Virginia to the Commandant of the French Forces on the Ohio,
October 1753 – January 1754. Williamsburg, Virginia: Facsimile Edition, Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation, 1959.
Wright, Louis B., The Cultural Life of the American Colonies. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 2002 (reprint of
1957 original).
Wulf, Andrea, Founding
Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the
American Nation. London: William Heinemann, 2011.**
Some Due Acknowledgements
For Die Fasting:
Indebtedness and gratitude are hereby expressed to
the innumerable anonymous Internet website writers and organizers from whom
your author has picked up what little he knows about such topics as:
· the operation of a “Brown
Bess” musket
· mortality statistics for the
Seven Years’ War
· 18th Century
diseases
· the Iroquois Confederacy
· popular music of the mid-18th
Century
· 18th Century
costume and accessories
· the Dutch Reformed Church
(thanks also to e-mail correspondents Allan Janssen, Daniel Meeter, Howard
Moths, David Voorhees, and Rett Zabriskie)
Lastly, I would also like to thank the volunteer
readers of the manuscript of Die Fasting for their good will,
sharp eyes, and kind comments: Phil
Bowers, Sally & Bob Burns, Margaret Carriel, Ben Carriel, John Chodes,
Frederick Cookinham, Antoinette Haskell, David T. Jones, and Fredda
Kaufman.
For Great Mischief:
Further thanks to all those above for their
continuing support in the production of Great
Mischief, but especially Frederick Cookinham and David T. Jones.
Special thanks also to Hillegonda & Dr. Mel
Rosen, for their insights into the Dutch language; and to Jocelyn Wilkes, for
suggestions regarding the dramatization of midwifery and problematic
childbirths.
For If Two Are Dead:
Thanks once
again to Frederick Cookinham
for his invaluable, sharp-eyed editorial reading. And to David
T. Jones for the marvelous evolving portraits of Thomas Dordrecht. (Thanks
also to Tim Amrhein for his technical assistance.)
Also to:
·
R. Grant
Gilmore III, Ph.D., for making time to meet with me and for sharing his
doctoral thesis, The Archaeology of New
World Slave Societies: A Comparative Analysis with particular reference to St.
Eustatius, Netherlands Antilles (Institute of Archaeology, University
College London, 2005).
·
D.
P. Lyle, M.D., author of Forensics and Fiction: Clever, Intriguing, and
Downright Odd Questions from Crime Writers, for
responding to an e-mailed query re the unusual and nefarious murder method.
·
Thomas
M. Truxes, author of Defying Empire: Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York. A friend met through the American Revolution Round Table–New York,
Mr. Truxes’s book detailed the social background of 1762 New York City, and he
personally offered advice and encouragement.
For Exquisite Folly:
Frederick
Cookinham—the novel’s dedicatee—has once again provided invaluable,
detailed historical and literary advice. His constant support over the years is
much appreciated.
Also to:
·
Prolific historical author Thomas
Fleming, with whom I’ve had the honor to collaborate on our New York
American Revolution Round Table, has been most generous with encouragement and
suggestions, and generously agreed to comment on the working draft.
·
And David T. Jones
has once again captured the essence of our determined, hard-working,
twenty-five year-old hero, in addition to producing another dramatic book
cover.
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