This is a history of the region now known as the United States of America, from earliest times to the American victory over the British and the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The book charts the arrival of the first Americans through Alaska, millennia before the coming of the Norsemen, or of Cabot, Columbus and Raleigh. It tells of the sixteenth century incursions by the Spanish, French and English, their interaction with the American Indians, and describes the early settlements, their culture, activities and trade. The author traces the rise to dominance of the British settlers, and the establishment of the whole of east America within the British Empire. The book closes with an account of the war with the British and of Washington's final triumph.

Esmond Wright is a graduate of the Universites of Durham in England and of Virginia in the United States. After serving in the British Eighth Army in the Second World War, he pursued an academic career, teaching at the Universities of Glasgow, London, Yale, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Ohio State. From 1970 to 1983 he was director of the Institute of US Studies at the University of London.