The Virginia Adventure: Roanoke to James Towne: An Archaeological and Historical Odyssey

In an elegantly written tour de force of history and archeology, Hume (Martin's Hundred) tells a dark tale of two cities. One, the earliest English colony in North America, Roanoke Island, off North Carolina, was settled briefly in 1584 by a colonizing expedition organized by Sir Walter Raleigh; a subsequent group of colonists disappeared without a trace by 1590. Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement in America, founded in 1607, was plagued by greedy, feuding administrators, bad management from London, disease, starvation, the colonists' ``self-defeating slothfulness,'' and their paralyzing fear of Indians and of one another, according to Hume, chief archeologist at Colonial Williamsburg. Enlivened by period engravings, paintings, maps, photographs of sites and artifacts, this saga of Anglo-Native American relations shattered by English arrogance and disdain is peopled with astonishing figures like British captain Samuel Argall, who kidnapped Algonquian chief Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas and held her for ransom, and sinister Spanish diplomat/spymaster Pedro de Zuniga who did his best to scuttle the English adventure. BOMC selection. (Sept.)