At a time when so-called "professional" historians are doing mental gymnastics to find "multicultural" and other politically correct interpretations of U.S. history (the Iroquois Confederacy as model for the Federalist Papers, etc. etc.), David Hackett Fischer brings us back to reality by showing just how pervasive has been the influence of the earliest British colonists---far more pervasive, in fact, than most of us had imagined, covering everything from political and legal institutions on the one hand to modes of play and styles of domestic architecture on the other. A simply magisterial work of historical synthesis that every American citizen---of whatever race or ethnicity---should read and ponder.The first in a projected series on the cultural history of America, this whets one's appetites for the others.