Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press)

Captain John Smith was one of the most insightful and colorful writers to visit America in the colonial period. While his first venture was in Virginia, some of his most important work concerned New England and the colonial enterprise as a whole.

The publication in 1986 of Philip Barbour’s three–volume edition of Smith’s works made available the complete Smith opus. In Karen Ordahl Kupperman’s new edition her intelligent and imaginative selection and thematic arrangement of Smith’s most important writings will make Smith accessible to scholars, students, and general readers alike. Kupperman’s introductory material and notes clarify Smith’s meaning and the context in which he wrote, while the selections are large enough to allow Captain Smith to speak for himself. As a reasonably priced distillation of the best of John Smith, Kupperman’s edition will allow a wide audience to discover what a remarkable thinker and writer he was.

Karen Ordahl Kupperman is professor of history at the University of Connecticut and author of Settling with the Indians: The Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in America, 1580–1640 and Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony.