Love and Hate in Jamestown, David A. Price
Love and Hate in Jamestown, David A. Price
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Love and Hate in Jamestown
John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation

Author: David A. Price

Narrator: Josh Innerst

Unabridged: 10 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/15/2020

Synopsis

A gripping narrative of one of the great survival stories of American history: the opening of the first permanent English settlement in the New World. Drawing on period letters and chronicles, and on the papers of the Virginia Company–which financed the settlement of Jamestown–David Price tells a tale of cowardice and courage, stupidity and brilliance, tragedy and costly triumph. He takes us into the day-to-day existence of the English men and women whose charge was to find gold and a route to the Orient, and who found, instead, hardship and wretched misery. Death, in fact, became the settlers’ most faithful companion, and their infighting was ceaseless.

Price offers a rare balanced view of the relationship between the settlers and the natives. He unravels the crucial role of Pocahontas, a young woman whose reality has been obscured by centuries of legend and misinformation (and, more recently, animation). He paints indelible portraits of Chief Powhatan, the aged monarch who came close to ending the colony’s existence, and Captain John Smith, the former mercenary and slave, whose disdain for class distinctions infuriated many around him–even as his resourcefulness made him essential to the colony’s success.

Love and Hate in Jamestown is a superb work of popular history, reminding us of the horrors and heroism that marked the dawning of our nation.

About David A. Price

David A. Price was raised in Richmond, Virginia, and was educated at the College of William and Mary, where he received his degree in computer science. He graduated from Harvard Law School and Cambridge University. Price has written for the Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business Daily, Business 2.0, the Washington Post, Forbes, and Inc., and he is the author of Love and Hate in Jamestown. He lives with his wife and sons in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Christina on January 01, 2018

This was just wonderful. Page-turning. Pretty please, can historians always write like this? I particularly admired how seriously Price took what the people at the time thought and felt and wrote down - he is no chronist. This book connected so many threads of history for me that I had in separate c......more

Goodreads review by Brandon on January 06, 2025

This book is about Jamestown, from its humble (and rough) beginnings, to its ultimate status as the first permanent English colony in America. It’s told through the lens of our main chronicler Captain John Smith, and those who deeply impacted him there like the native princess Pocahontas. I don’t say......more

Goodreads review by Mike on July 11, 2022

I give it high marks for its detailed research and for painting a clear picture of the disaster of the early colonization attempts of England in Powhatan territory. ‘Love & Hate in Jamestown’ is the title, but it was much more about ‘Hate’ than ‘Love’. This was a good read… BUT… it could have been a......more

Goodreads review by Shauna on October 10, 2008

This book fascinated me. I'd never really taken any interest in the story of Pocahontas or John Smith or the Jamestown colony. Price sets the stage of how the colonizing process started (business investments), and how John Smith came to play such a crucial role in it. It's a shame that Americans don......more

Goodreads review by Christine on May 19, 2020

This is a very well-written piece of non-fiction that I really couldn't put down. There are so many interesting details that I hadn't been exposed to before (as a history major), I couldn't get enough! Simply fascinating--read it!......more

Quotes

"A fine book...one that personifies the virtues I esteem...clarity, intelligence, grace,
novelty, and brevity."
--David L. Beck, San Jose Mecury News

Solid and engaging... Price focuses on the human story of Jamestown, nearly mythic
in its resonances."
--Caleb Crain, New York Times Book Review

"Splendidly realized...firmly grounded in original sources...and in later scholarship, it has
the immediacy of contemporary journalism...by teasing out the themes of love and hate,
Price has given the Jamestown story a contemporary freshness."
--Michael Kenney, Boston Globe

"Combining a gift for storytelling with meticulous scholarship...Price sorts reality from
legend in his splendid new book....it is superbly done."
-- Roger Bishop, BookPage

"Sparkling....Price relates the entire riveting story of the founding of Virginia....built
unobtrusively on the best scholarship....a splendid work of serious narrative history."
-- Publishers Weekly

"A graceful narrative history of the troubled Jamestown colony....A first-rate work of
popular history, and sure to become a standard."
--Kirkus

“Price has digested the most recent scholarship on early Virginia, then filtered it through his instincts as a storyteller to create the most historically correct and stylistically elegant rendering of John Smith and Pocahontas that I have ever read."
–Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

"In a rousing tale of the early years of Jamestown, David A. Price rescues Pocahontas and the Virginia settlement from Hollywood cartoons as deftly as the young Indian princess may have saved Captain John Smith from execution by her father, the great Powhatan."
–Jon Kukla, author of A Wilderness So Immense

"A juicy feast of compelling storytelling....a meticulosuly researched volume ...that scans
in the imagination like a motion picture. Love and Hate in Jamestown deserves an honored spot
in any history buffs library."
--Jerrold J. Ladd, Sr., Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"A fine book...one that personifies the virtues I esteem...clarity, intelligence, grace,
novelty, and brevity."
--David L. Beck, San Jose Mecury News

Awards

  • School Library Journal Adult Books for Young Adults
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