1607

Lange uses recent research, including findings at the archeological project called Jamestown Rediscovery, to argue that disease and drought were a large part of the community’s collapse, and that the new arrivals and native populations weren’t as consistently at odds as is usually supposed. This in contrast to the conventional view, expressed most recently in Susan and William H. Harkins’s Jamestown, the First English Colony (2006), that the 400-year-old settlement’s early troubles (in the first 25 years, fully two-thirds of its residents died) were caused by the colonists’ general ineptitude and lack of preparation. Illustrated with color photos of artifacts and of costumed re-enactors, this broad overview of the colony’s first few decades—in particular its relationship with indigenous groups—makes a valuable lead-in to the likes of Sandy Pobst’s more detail-oriented Virginia, 1607-1776 (2005). (multimedia resource lists) (Nonfiction. 10-13)