'In the beginning,' John Locke wrote, 'all the world was America.' The land was vast, verdant, and bountiful but devoid of one element: humanity. That gap has been filled for some twenty-five thousand years, by the continuous passage of travellers who have come to the American strand, crossing first by land bridge, later ocean vessel, and then aircraft, to see what the New World presented. For some, it was a place of new beginnings and fresh starts; for others, a land of bondage and subjugation; for all, a region of stark contrasts between what the world may have been and what it could be. A Traveller's History of the U.S.A. guides today's travellers through a general history of the people and places of America. Starting with the lay of the land and the cultures of its first inhabitants, it examines the rise of European colonies, the emergence of a new nation, and the tragic, triumphant, twisting course of its republican experiment, right up to the present day.
