History Books

Serious Civil War historians should find Robert Krick's book to be a very useful reference as weather is always a factor in battle. The former park service historian has compiled official information along with anecdotal references taken from soldiers' books, diaries, and letters as well as newspapers. Includes sunrise and sunset data from a period almanac.

Outspoken Virginia women left their mark in the proceedings of the colonial courts.  Author Terri Snyder exhumes and examines the circumstances surrounding some cases that touched on women's issues.

A feminist examination of the roles of women of different classes--lower class white, upper class white, slave, and Indian--in colonial Virginia, with much reliance on primary sources.

 In the Footsteps of Grant and Lee combines engaging text and striking photos to tell the story of those battles that became known as the Overland Campaign--the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, the North Anna River, Totopotomoy Creek, Bethesda Church, and Cold Harbor.

Virginia's Northern Neck: A Pictorial History is filled with photos and illustrations that, along with informative text, give an lively dimension to the region's past, from early settlements to steamboat days to 20th-century lives well-lived.

Cooking methods and recipes as done by Virginia's colonists. Recipes are drawn from period cookbooks by Mrs. Custis, Mrs. Randolph, Mrs. Glasse, and numerous others. Dressing trout, stewing oysters, making ice cream, dressing mutton, and layering trifles were part and parcel of colonial cooking.
Also available to check out.

Often compared unfavorably with colonial New England, the early Chesapeake has been portrayed as irreligious, unstable, and violent. In this important new study, James Horn challenges this conventional view and looks across the Atlantic to assess the enduring influence of English attitudes, values, and behavior on the social and cultural evolution of the early Chesapeake.
(From the publisher's description)

"...chronicles four centuries of public attitudes about the Bay - and legislative responses to them - from 1607, the date of the first English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, to the close of the twentieth century. In the last few decades, wide-reaching measures by federal and local governments have influenced how people use the Bay: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completed a massive study of Bay quality; the Chesapeake Bay Program was launched; the Critical Area Protection Act went into effect."
(From the publisher's description)

Focusing on the Chesapeake Bay area, Mills (a journalist and historian associated with the U.S. Naval Institute) depicts those on both sides of the law during prohibition--bootleggers, still-operators, and mobsters, as well as the police, federal agents, Coast Guardsmen, and temperance crusaders. His account draws from local lore, with the backing of newspaper reports and government documents.
(From the publisher's description)

Captain John Smith's voyages throughout the new world did not end--or, for that matter, begin--with the trip on which he was captured and brought to the great chief Powhatan. Partly in an effort to map the region, Smith covered countless leagues of the Chesapeake Bay and its many tributary rivers, and documented his experiences. In this ambitious and extensively illustrated book, scholars from multiple disciplines take the reader on Smith's exploratory voyages and reconstruct the Chesapeake environment and its people as Smith encountered them.
(From the publisher's description)