Louis B. Wright

Discusses the changes in politics, transportation, recreation, city and country life, social customs, education, and religion between the Constitutional Convention and the Civil War.

From wilderness to Republic: 1607-1787, by L.B. Wright-Architecture, by G.B. Tatum-Painting, by J.W. McCoubrey-The decorative arts, by R.C. Smith-Bibliography (p. 353-357).

A lively, colorful account of the adventures of Spanish, Portuguese, and English explorers emphasizes their diverse and seemingly contradictory motives. In the late fifteenth century Europe was astir with dreams of discovery that would shortly transform the world. It was an age of intense intellectual curiosity, of questioning, testing, and the balancing of conflicting motivations. The author, a distinguished Renaissance historian, has sorted out the contradictory motives and behavior of the European explorers and exploiters in this Golden Age, looking at the lands they discovered, sometimes conquered, and often bloodied- Africa, India, Mexico, Central and South America. He describes in dramatic detail the extraordinary feats and strange attitudes of the Renaissance conquerers and explorers as he traces the course of Europe's expansion overseas from the era of Columbus to the early seventeenth century. -- from Book Jacket.

Includes voyages of Hudson, the search for the Northwest Passage and discovery of the Pacific coast.

Summarizes the development of intellectual life in such areas as religion, literature, education, and social thought in the first 150 years of the American colonies.