In offering here a highly readable yet comprehensive description of New England's Indians as they lived when European settlers first met them, the author provides a well-rounded picture of the natives as neither savages nor heroes, but fellow human beings existing at a particular time and in a particular environment. He dispels once and for all the common notion of native New England as peopled by a handful of savages wandering in a trackless wilderness. In sketching the picture the author has had help from such early explorers as Verrazano, Champlain, John Smith, and a score of literate sailors; Pilgrims and Puritans; settlers, travelers, military men, and missionaries. A surprising number of these took time and trouble to write about the new land and the characteristics and way of life of its native people. A second major background source has been the patient investigations of modern archaeologists and scientists, whose several enthusiastic organizations sponsor physical excavations and publications that continually add to our perception of prehistoric men and women, their habits, and their environment. This account of the earlier New Englanders, of their land and how they lived in it and treated it; their customs, food, life, means of livelihood, and philosophy of life will be of interest to all general audiences concerned with the history of Native Americans and of New England.

What really happened on the first Thanksgiving? How did a British drinking song become the US national anthem? And what makes Superman so darned American? Every tradition, even the noblest and most cherished, has a history, none more so than in the United States—a nation born with relative indifference, if not hostility, to the past. Most Americans would be surprised to learn just how recent (and controversial) the origins of their traditions are, as well as how those origins are often related to such divisive forces as the trauma of the Civil War or fears for American identity stemming from immigration and socialism.

In pithy, entertaining chapters, Inventing American Tradition explores a set of beloved traditions spanning political symbols, holidays, lifestyles, and fictional characters—everything from the anthem to the American flag, blue jeans, and Mickey Mouse. Shedding light on the individuals who created these traditions and their motivations for promoting them, Jack David Eller reveals the murky, conflicted, confused, and contradictory history of emblems and institutions we very often take to be the bedrock of America. What emerges from this sideways take on our most celebrated Americanisms is the realization that all traditions are invented by particular people at particular times for particular reasons, and that the process of “traditioning” is forever ongoing—especially in the land of the free.

With an original 1931 press run of only seven hundred and fifty, surviving copies of Land Ho! 1620 are now either in archives or exist as valued collector's editions. Acclaimed by the Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association in 1957 as "the most authentic, interesting, and best written book on the voyage of the Pilgrims and their lives," Nickerson's work is now available in this handsome paperback edition, complete with all original illustrations and maps. Nickerson scholar Delores Bird Carpenter updated all one hundred and seventy- nine annotations, checking them against original sources. In addition, she has prepared a new bibliography and an extensive, new introduction that places Land Ho! 1620 into its historical and historiographical context.  
     Divided into four parts, the first describes "the Voyage"; the second, told with the skill of a shipbuilder, describes "the Ship," which includes drawings of the deck plan, the passenger quarters, and the elevation and the sail plan. Also included in this section are discussions of the ship's speed, instruments, and personnel. The Third, "the backside of Cape Cod," addresses the problem of where the Mayflower first saw land, and its subsequent course. Nickerson concludes with "the Landfall and the Landing." Of great significance is his map, The Back Side of Cape Cod Today—1930 and Yesterday—1620.