Description

From the Preface by Warren M. Billings:

“In the late 1980s Chief of Interpretation and Education at Colonial National HIstorical Park James N. Haskett recruited me to prepare the original edition of this book. We agreed on certain underlying requirements: It would be a compact narrative history of Jamestown from 1607 to modern times; it would rest on the best available scholarship; it would be illustrated; and it would contain study aids to readers who wished to learn more about Jamestown in greater detail. Jamestown and the Birth of the Nation  was the result, and it has remained in print ever since its publication in 1990.

The advance of knowledge after 1990 made the book increasingly obsolete and less instructive to readers. Ongoing archaeological digs revolutionized our understanding and interpretation of the settlement. Those discoveries and other documentary recoveries informed a corpus of writings about Jamestown much greater than the one from which I originally drew.

New visitor centers afforded a coherent visual interpretative introduction to the site. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s return visit in 2007 was the high point of the quadricentennial anniversary of the first landing.

Given that the book needed revision, Bill Warder of the NPS and I discussed the possibility of preparing a new edition. He in turn consulted his division chief Paul Carson and Superintendent Kym A. Hall. All three urged me onward, and I set about preparing this volume. In appearance it resembles its predecessor. The chapter titles and overall arrangement continue as before, but I recast the content to reflect my current thinking in light of fresh findings. New illustrations have been added or replace earlier ones. The chronology, the appendices, the notes, and the suggested reading list have been updated. The length of the latter is indicative of how the volume and variety of the literature about Jamestown have grown since 1990 and how that literature is increasingly available in digital formats…”