A Land As God Made It

"A thorough and painstaking history of the Jamestown settlement.... Horn writes with clarity and precision, and in John Smith, he has a larger-than-life central figure... [Horn] has done a careful job of synthesizing his material. He's also strong on the details: his version of the 1609 famine...ignites the horror in the reader's mind."

"A superb history...an exemplary account.... All in all, an absolutely terrific book."

"[Horn] is eminently well qualified and writes with assurance about the actual events and the many myths that surround the first years of the Colonial experience.... A Land as God Made Itshould take a rightful place in the very short list of books that are must reading for anybody who wants to understand how it all began."

"A rip-snortin' adventure, petty-and power-politics, blood-and-guts rivalries and more.... This work has the special merit of revealing a historical treasure--like a lost Gilbert Stewart found in the dusty attic of history, a subject whose importance becomes as obvious as our neglect of it seems silly and wrong."

"[Horn] presents the story of early Virginia almost as though it were the plot of a colorful novel.... Horn's astute history is a story of courage and cowardice, wisdom and stupidity, cross-cultural friendship and racist brutality, religious greatness and religious hypocrisy, and all the qualities that make America what it is today."

"This is a must read for true Virginians (and those who would aspire to that lofty station) and should be force-fed to the descendants of the codfish aristocracy who forget that we got here first."