Here are 100 books that Dunmore's New World fans have personally recommended if you like Dunmore's New World. Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724-1774

Lori Benton Author Of Many Sparrows

From my list on Dunmore’s War (1774 Ohio frontier).

Why am I passionate about this?

Lori Benton is an award-winning, multi-published author of historical novels set during the 18th century North America. Her literary passion is bringing little known historical events to life through the eyes of those who lived it, particularly those set along the Appalachian frontier, where European and Native American cultural and world views collided. Virginia Governor Lord Dunmore’s campaign against the Shawnee nation on the eve of the Revolutionary war, culminating in the Battle of Point Pleasant, is a fascinating, complex, and poignant example of the armies and individuals that planned, fought, and resisted the campaign.

Lori's book list on Dunmore’s War (1774 Ohio frontier)

Lori Benton Why Lori loves this book

A comprehensive examination of the Ohio Valley native nations during the decades leading up to Dunmore’s War. Though the covering of the actual campaign makes up a small portion of this book, any researcher desiring a balanced view of the conflict for land in the Ohio couldn’t ask for a better resource than A Country Between.

By Michael N. McConnell ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Country Between as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Ohio Country in the eighteenth century was a zone of international strife, and the Delawares, Shawnees, Iroquois, and other natives who had taken refuge there were caught between the territorial ambitions of the French and British. A Country Between is unique in assuming the perspective of the Indians who struggled to maintain their autonomy in a geographical tinderbox.


If you love Dunmore's New World...

Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

Book cover of Point Pleasant 1774: Prelude to the American Revolution

Lori Benton Author Of Many Sparrows

From my list on Dunmore’s War (1774 Ohio frontier).

Why am I passionate about this?

Lori Benton is an award-winning, multi-published author of historical novels set during the 18th century North America. Her literary passion is bringing little known historical events to life through the eyes of those who lived it, particularly those set along the Appalachian frontier, where European and Native American cultural and world views collided. Virginia Governor Lord Dunmore’s campaign against the Shawnee nation on the eve of the Revolutionary war, culminating in the Battle of Point Pleasant, is a fascinating, complex, and poignant example of the armies and individuals that planned, fought, and resisted the campaign.

Lori's book list on Dunmore’s War (1774 Ohio frontier)

Lori Benton Why Lori loves this book

Osprey books are often the best place to start when researching a new historical topic. While writing my novel, Many Sparrows, I relied on this slender volume more than any other. Richly illustrated, packed with maps, vivid without getting bogged down in detail… if you want to begin delving into the topic of Dunmore’s War (Point Pleasant being its single notable battle), this is the book for you.

By Peter Dennis , John F. Winkler ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Point Pleasant 1774 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The only major conflict of Lord Dunmore's War, the battle of Point Pleasant was fought between Virginian militia and American Indians from the Shawnee and Mingo tribes. Following increased tensions and a series of incidents between the American settlers and the natives, Dunmore, the last colonial governor of Virginia, and Colonel Andrew Lewis led two armies against the tribes. On October 10, 1774 Lewis and his men resisted a fierce attack, led by Shawnee chief Keigh-tugh-qua, or Cornstalk, at Point Pleasant, near the mouth of the Kanawha river. Despite significant losses on both sides, Lewis succeeded in forcing the Shawnee…


Book cover of The Ohio Frontier, Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830

Lori Benton Author Of Many Sparrows

From my list on Dunmore’s War (1774 Ohio frontier).

Why am I passionate about this?

Lori Benton is an award-winning, multi-published author of historical novels set during the 18th century North America. Her literary passion is bringing little known historical events to life through the eyes of those who lived it, particularly those set along the Appalachian frontier, where European and Native American cultural and world views collided. Virginia Governor Lord Dunmore’s campaign against the Shawnee nation on the eve of the Revolutionary war, culminating in the Battle of Point Pleasant, is a fascinating, complex, and poignant example of the armies and individuals that planned, fought, and resisted the campaign.

Lori's book list on Dunmore’s War (1774 Ohio frontier)

Lori Benton Why Lori loves this book

Part of the “History of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier” series, this book presents readers with many entertaining and informative accounts of Ohio life throughout the frontier era. The period covered in this book is just over 100 years, so Dunmore’s War, while given attention, is not explored in detail. Still, I found this book a valued and comprehensive survey that helped me to understand the political and cultural factors that led to the conflict in 1774, as well as what followed after.

By R. Douglas Hurt ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Ohio Frontier, Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Ohio Frontier
Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830

R. Douglas Hurt

"This exhaustively researched and well-written book provides a comprehensive history of Ohio from 1720 to 1830."
-Journal of the Early Republic

Nowhere on the American frontier was the clash of cultures more violent than in the Ohio country. There, Shawnees, Wyandots, Delawares, and other native peoples fought to preserve their land claims against an army that was incompetent at the beginning but highly trained and disciplined in the end.

Sales territory is worldwide
A History of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier
1996; 440 pages, 23 b&w photos, 7 maps, bibl.…


If you love James Corbett David...

Book cover of Sexy Selfie Nation: Standing Up for Yourself in Today's Toxic, Sexist Culture

Sexy Selfie Nation by Leora Tanenbaum,

The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.

Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…

Book cover of The Border Wars of the Upper Ohio Valley

Lori Benton Author Of Many Sparrows

From my list on Dunmore’s War (1774 Ohio frontier).

Why am I passionate about this?

Lori Benton is an award-winning, multi-published author of historical novels set during the 18th century North America. Her literary passion is bringing little known historical events to life through the eyes of those who lived it, particularly those set along the Appalachian frontier, where European and Native American cultural and world views collided. Virginia Governor Lord Dunmore’s campaign against the Shawnee nation on the eve of the Revolutionary war, culminating in the Battle of Point Pleasant, is a fascinating, complex, and poignant example of the armies and individuals that planned, fought, and resisted the campaign.

Lori's book list on Dunmore’s War (1774 Ohio frontier)

Lori Benton Why Lori loves this book

Yet another book about the Ohio frontier broader in scope than Dunmore’s War, but a chapter in this book is devoted to it. What sets this book apart is its focus on individual men and women who struggled to survive (and in some instances shaped) the constant wars on the Ohio frontier during the period: Daniel Boone; Chief Logan; the Zane family; Simon Kenton; Lewis Wetzel; the Girty brothers; George Rogers Clark, and more. The examination of their lives and the events they witnessed, lived through, and helped shape, lends a fuller picture of life during this turbulent era.

By William Hintzen ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Border Wars of the Upper Ohio Valley as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Conflict between the settlers and the Indians in the Pittsburg PA, Wheeling WV. area 1769-1794. Wetzel, Boone, Zane, Kenton, Girty.


Book cover of American Slavery, American Freedom

Leonard L. Richards Author Of The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780--1860

From my list on why slaveholders once dominated American politics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm now retired. But like many historians of my generation, I've been lucky. Having gone to the University of California when there was no tuition and got through graduate school thanks to the GI Bill, I then taught history for five decades, briefly at San Francisco State College and the University of Hawaii, and for a long stretch at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. During those years, I wrote eight books, one was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1987, and three won prizes—the Albert J. Beverage Award in 1970, the second-place Lincoln Prize in 2001, and the Langum Trust Prize in 2015. All but one deal with slavery and power.

Leonard's book list on why slaveholders once dominated American politics

Leonard L. Richards Why Leonard loves this book

How did the Virginia slaveholders somehow become the most celebrated spokesmen for “liberty” and “equality” in the Revolutionary Era even though they all owned hundreds of slaves? Morgan contends that to understand this paradox one has to go back to 17th-century colonial Virginia where American slavery and American freedom emerged together. Moreover, argues Morgan, those days not only had a profound effect on the American Revolution and the Early Republic, but on everything that has happened since.

By Edmund S. Morgan ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked American Slavery, American Freedom as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the American Revolution, Virginians were the most eloquent spokesmen for freedom and quality. George Washington led the Americans in battle against British oppression. Thomas Jefferson led them in declaring independence. Virginians drafted not only the Declaration but also the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they were elected to the presidency of the United States under that Constitution for thirty-two of the first thirty-six years of its existence. They were all slaveholders. In the new preface Edmund S. Morgan writes: "Human relations among us still suffer from the former enslavement of a large portion of our predecessors. The freedom…


Book cover of Relation of Virginia: A Boy's Memoir of Life with the Powhatans and the Patawomecks

Seth Mallios Author Of The Deadly Politics of Giving: Exchange and Violence at Ajacan, Roanoke, and Jamestown

From my list on alternate perspectives on Jamestown.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was Site Supervisor at the Jamestown Rediscovery Project in the late 1990s and early 2000s. My fondness for the people involved with the archaeological excavations is only rivaled by my love for the subject matter that involves the collision of cultures as Chesapeake Algonquians, Spanish Jesuits, and English colonists first encountered one another during the 16th and 17th centuries. Though I have been fortunate to write many books, my first book was on Jamestown, and this topic will always hold a special place in my scholarly heart (there is such a thing, I swear!).

Seth's book list on alternate perspectives on Jamestown

Seth Mallios Why Seth loves this book

Finally, Henry Spelman gets his own book! There is no shortage of Jamestown literature on John Smith, Pocahontas, John Rolfe, and Chief Powhatan, but Karen Ordahl Kupperman’s Relation of Virginia: A Boy’s Memoir of Life with the Powhatans and the Patawomecks offers the intriguing account of Henry Spelman, a 14-year-old English boy sent to live with the Chesapeake Algonquians during highly volatile times between Virginia’s indigenous population and the Jamestown colonists. 

I find this book particularly compelling for multiple reasons: it reverses traditional narrative roles and details a member of colonial society who was placed in servitude to the Indigenous population, it was one of very few examples of first-hand historical testimony from an adolescent (none survive from 1580's Roanoke, and only Alonso de Olmos offered an eyewitness account of the annihilation of the Ajacan Jesuits in 1570), and it has often been glossed over by Jamestown scholars.

By Karen Ordahl Kupperman (editor) , Henry Spelman ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Relation of Virginia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A memoir of one of America's first adventurers, a young boy who acted as a link between the Jamestown colonists and the Patawomecks and Powhatans.
"Being in displeasure of my friends, and desirous to see other countries, after three months sail we come with prosperous
winds in sight of Virginia." So begins the fascinating tale of Henry Spelman, a 14 year-old boy sent to Virginia in 1609. One of Jamestown's early arrivals, Spelman soon became an integral player, and sometimes a pawn, in the power struggle between the Chesapeake Algonquians and the English settlers.
Shortly after he arrived in the…


If you love Dunmore's New World...

Book cover of Crossing: A Chinese Family Railroad Novel

Crossing by Lisa Redfern,

Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad. 

Book cover of Complete Writings

Bettye Kearse Author Of The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President's Black Family

From my list on notable enslaved women.

Why am I passionate about this?

According to the eight generations of my family’s oral historians, I am a descendant of an enslaved cook and her enslaver, and half-brother, President James Madison. I am also a writer and a retired pediatrician. My essays, personal narrative, and commentaries have appeared in the Boston Herald, River Teeth, TIME, and the New York Times Magazine.

Bettye's book list on notable enslaved women

Bettye Kearse Why Bettye loves this book

In 1761, the slave ship Phillis departed from Africa and headed toward America. Among the human cargo was a young girl. Judging by her missing incisors, she was seven or eight years old. Soon after the ship’s arrival in Boston, John and Susann Wheatley purchased the girl and named her after the ship that had delivered her to them. Mrs. Wheatley taught their servant to read and write and introduced her to classical and English literature, including revered poets. Around 1765, Phillis began writing poetry, and her first poem, “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin,” published in 1767, when she was only about fourteen years old, rendered her the first black person in America to publish a poem. Carretta’s collection of Wheatley’s work includes a fascinating, thoroughly researched introduction.

By Phillis Wheatley ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Complete Writings as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The extraordinary writings of Phillis Wheatley, a slave girl turned published poet

In 1761, a young girl arrived in Boston on a slave ship, sold to the Wheatley family, and given the name Phillis Wheatley. Struck by Phillis' extraordinary precociousness, the Wheatleys provided her with an education that was unusual for a woman of the time and astonishing for a slave. After studying English and classical literature, geography, the Bible, and Latin, Phillis published her first poem in 1767 at the age of 14, winning much public attention and considerable fame. When Boston publishers who doubted its authenticity rejected an…


Book cover of Poet, Pilgrim, Rebel: The Story of Anne Bradstreet, America's First Published Poet

Benjamin Giroux Author Of I Am Odd, I Am New

From my list on debut children's books of 2021.

Why am I passionate about this?

Over the past several months, I have had the pleasure to work with amazing authors who, like me, have debut children's books that were released in 2021. These books range in topics, from overcoming your fears to transgender to history, to cute rats that will let your imagination run wild. Being a kid myself, my parents read every night to me. These are books that like mine, are filled with representation that was lacking in those books that were read to me.

Benjamin's book list on debut children's books of 2021

Benjamin Giroux Why Benjamin loves this book

This book, that has an amazing feeling cover, tells an important part of not only American history, but more importantly, women's history. This story is beautifully illustrated using a great color pallet. Follow along on Anne’s journey to the new world and how she changed that world forever!

By Katie Munday Williams , Tania Rex (illustrator) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Poet, Pilgrim, Rebel as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 5, 6, 7, and 8.

What is this book about?

The inspiring story of a Puritan woman whose passion for writing poetry broke barriers.

Late at night, with her children tucked into bed and her husband away on business, Anne Dudley Bradstreet composed poems by candlelight. She let her thoughts from the day tumble out, memorizing each poem line by line before daring to shape the words onto scraps of scarce parchment. Puritan women in the 1600s weren't allowed to be writers. But when the world learned about Anne's poetry, even she was astonished by what happened next.

This charmingly illustrated picture book tells the inspiring story of how a…


Book cover of Deliverance from Evil

Sandra Wagner-Wright Author Of The Life & Times of Sarah Good, Accused Witch

From my list on 17th-century persecution & witchcraft in Salem.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m not an expert on witchcraft or the Salem Witch Trials. However, I am a historian of women’s history and a writer of historical fiction. I’m particularly drawn to stories that try to explain the inexplicable, and these five books are written by people with a similar fascination. In my opinion, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Greg Houle wrote their stories as a way to understand themselves and their family history. Stacy Schiff looked for a factual explanation of the frenzy. Frances Hill and Lucretia Grindle wove facts into stories. And I think that their differing interpretations of the same events give readers a better understanding of the past.

Sandra's book list on 17th-century persecution & witchcraft in Salem

Sandra Wagner-Wright Why Sandra loves this book

This is an excellent work of historical fiction about the Salem Witch Trials with a primary focus on George Burroughs, one-time minister at the church in Salem Village.

At the time of his arrest, Burroughs had been living on the frontier in Maine. The story moves from Indian raids on frontier settlements to the political machinations in Salem Village and Salem Town to demonstrate that accusations of witchcraft were more about power and political vindictiveness than fear of the supernatural. 

By Frances Hill ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Deliverance from Evil as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Deliverance from Evil brings to life the Salem witch trials, one of the most uncanny times in our nation's history. Young girls in trances pointed out neighbors, leaders, relatives--over 150 people were arrested, with many hanged for their supposed sins. Frances Hill, author of A Delusion of Satan, brings her deep historical and political understanding together with her honed skills as a novelist to produce a picture of the trials both realistic and emotional. She has written an extraordinary and gripping novel of hysteria, power plays, and love in colonial America.


If you love James Corbett David...

Book cover of Child of Vanris

Child of Vanris by Nikki McCormack,

At five years old, Kasiel was found with the pointed ends of his ears cut off. Despite that brutal start, he’s lived twelve peaceful years with the man who took him in. Keeping his hair long over his mutilated ears helps him hide the fact that he is Vanrian, a…

Book cover of Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation

Ida Flowers Author Of Jessie's Passion

From my list on everyday life in the Southern colonies.

Why am I passionate about this?

Ever since I started reading the Little House series at the age of ten, I’ve been in love with women’s history. In college I had the opportunity to write a paper on the topic of my choice and I chose women of the American colonial period. I found that while our daily life is now very different, our feelings as women are much the same. The more primary sources I discovered, the more I could feel the fears, sorrows, and joys of the determined women who came before us, unwittingly creating records of their experiences in their correspondence and journals as they built homes and businesses from the raw, wild land.

Ida's book list on everyday life in the Southern colonies

Ida Flowers Why Ida loves this book

I love reading about women from the past who asserted themselves in a world where there was little was expected from them besides obedience to the men in their lives. Founding Mothers is a story of influential women prior to and after the American Revolution, with many quotes from personal correspondence, from Abigail Adams to Martha Washington. Not only do we read of the activities in which they participated, including births and deaths of their own children, but the emotions that kept them company as well. Touching on the lives of those less renowned as well, Founding Mothers is a springboard for deeper research into the lives of women living in young America. 

By Cokie Roberts ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Founding Mothers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Cokie Roberts comes New York Times bestseller Founding Mothers, an intimate and illuminating look at the fervently patriotic and passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families—and their country—proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it.

While much has been written about the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, battled the British, and framed the Constitution, the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters they left behind have been little noticed by history. #1 New York Times bestselling author Cokie Roberts brings us…


Book cover of A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724-1774
Book cover of Point Pleasant 1774: Prelude to the American Revolution
Book cover of The Ohio Frontier, Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830

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