Katherine Grandjean is Assistant Professor of History at Wellesley College.
In six chapters covering a century, Grandjean explains the
transformation of England's holdings from a handful of isolated
settlements to a connected array of towns by tracing the movement
of letters and oral messages over land and water. By doing so, she
demonstrates convincingly that information exchange was a crucial
element for English expansion. American Passage makes a
significant contribution to our understanding of 17th-century New
England. -- Richard D. Brown, co-author of Taming Lust: Crimes
against Nature in the Early Republic
An impressive achievement. Grandjean offers new insights into the
history of early New England, when the English presence was little
more than a few scattered, disconnected, and vulnerable outposts at
a great distance from England itself. Carefully researched,
elegantly crafted, and clearly written, American Passage
captures the primitiveness, contingency, porousness, and fluidity
of English settlement in an environment where their communications
were heavily reliant on Native Americans. -- Konstantin Dierks,
author of In My Power: Letter Writing and Communications in
Early America
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