The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture. This book provides a compelling synthesis of a veritable mountain of scholarship and, in its detailed annotation the best guide available to recent work on the social and economic history of early modern Britain's Atlantic world.

Melton A. McLaurin is professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He is author of eight books, including the award-winning Separate Pasts: Growing Up White in the Segregated South.