Book Reviews
BOOK REVIEWS David Childs. Invading America: The cleverly written synthesis. Childs has an English Assault on the New World, 1497- excellent grasp of the material, and an 1630. Barnsley, S. Yorks.: Pen & Sword impressive command of the primary Books Limited, www.pen-and-sword.co.uk, sources. While his focus may be too broad 2012. xi + 306 pp., illustrations, maps, for specialist readers, Childs should be appendices, notes, bibliography, index. UK commended for attempting to blaze a new £25.00, cloth; ISBN 978-1-84832-145-8. trail into this well-trodden territory. Childs’ declared timeframe is the Historians since Hakluyt have remarked on “long sixteenth century,” from John Cabot England’s slowness in establishing New to John Winthrop. The information on World colonies, especially in comparison Cabot is sketchy in the extreme, however, with her rival, Spain. David Childs seeks to and the author focuses almost exclusively explain the widespread failure of early on the period between Frobisher’s first English colonies by viewing them as voyage in 1576 and the Jamestown beachheads in an extended amphibious massacre of 1622. A literature review campaign. Childs identifies the factors identifies the intellectual underpinnings for crucial for successful amphibious New World voyages, ranging from John operations, which, when absent, doomed Donne to the King James Bible. The failure would-be settlers from Baffin Island to the of the Roanoke colony on the windswept Carolinas. These factors included proper reconnaissance and intelligence, sufficient Carolina Outer Banks is used to illustrate forces and supplies, realistic objectives, the importance of proper reconnaissance effective naval forces and joint command, and site selection.
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