Before Penn: An Illustrated History of The Delaware River Colonies 1609 - 1682

Have you ever wanted to know what the heck was going on with the colonization of North America (particularly the Delaware Valley) before William Penn showed up? Did you buy a book to find out? If you did, you probably fell asleep about three pages into the book, because as much as I love history, books on this subject have been chock full of facts, a little disjointed on narrative, and very light on color.Hal Taylor fixes that. He's written an organized, coherent history of the settlements of the English, Swedes, and Dutch while also managing to use words like "badass" and mix in plenty of stuff to flesh out the character of these oh-so-very-human early settlers of Delaware, South Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Pirates (sorry, privateers!), tyrants, greed, strongly worded letters to other governors, rebellions, massacres by Native Americans, starvation, mosquitos... this book has it all, and it's all true. It really gives you a great sense of the early history of the east coast of North America, and gave me the best feel I've ever gained on the early history of the Delaware Valley.Hal Taylor is also the illustrator, and beautiful pictures and maps perfectly go along with the narration of the story.

Ok, I'll admit it - I am a history nut and this book covers where I was born and raised and where I still live. Not only are the stories compelling, very interesting but the book is filled with lovely illustrations. The entire book is so well done, just a complete delight, a treasure.

Enjoyed the book and visited some of the area that is outlined in the book.