Virginia Anderson

It's not everyday you read a history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and declare it riveting. But that was absolutely the case with Virginia Anderson's analysis of the Great Migration. 

New England's Generation is just the sort of history I like: readable, but thorough; lively, but realistic. This is not popular non-fiction; this is history as it should be: detailed, numerical, and with a coherent narrative arc. 

For me, the best and most convincing section of Anderson's history was actually the first: in it, she outlines the sorts of emigrants who made their way across the Atlantic during the ten years between 1630-1640. Anderson's conclusions here are striking: because whereas emigrant populations to Jamestown tended to be young and male (as might have been expected), those transplanted to New England were older and more mature: in their thirties, married for about a decade, and traveling with an average of three children. 

Most emigrants, therefore, had a considerable amount to lose: why leave Old England -- with land, stability, and reputation -- and come across to New? What benefits could an emigration of this sort offer?

Anderson is excellent on the answers, which include unfettered access to land, an ability to focus on one's spiritual pursuits, and the potential to acquire what that first generation of transplants referred to as "competency" (which is to say, a sense of material sufficiency and independence). This is an exceptional history: one that is worthy of a read by those interested early modern history: both in England as well as in what would become America.