A New York Times Notable Book and aSan Jose Mercury News Top 20 Nonfiction Book of 2003In 1606, approximately 105 British colonists sailed to America, seeking gold and a trade route to the Pacific. Instead, they found disease, hunger, and hostile natives. Ill prepared for such hardship, the men responded with incompetence and infighting; only the leadership of Captain John Smith averted doom for the first permanent English settlement in the New World.The Jamestown colony is one of the great survival stories of American history, and this book brings it fully to life for the first time. Drawing on extensive original documents, David A. Price paints intimate portraits of the major figures from the formidable monarch Chief Powhatan, to the resourceful but unpopular leader John Smith, to the spirited Pocahontas, who twice saved Smith’s life. He also gives a rare balanced view of relations between the settlers and the natives and debunks popular myths about the colony. This is a superb work of history, reminding us of the horrors and heroism that marked the dawning of our nation.

The swashbuckling life of the Elizabethan explorer and colonial governor is vividly recounted in this historical biography. Captain John Smith is best remembered for his association with Pocahontas, but this was only a small part of an extraordinary life filled with danger and adventure. As a soldier, he fought the Turks in Eastern Europe, where he beheaded three Turkish adversaries in duels. He was sold into slavery, then murdered his master to escape. He sailed under a pirate flag, was shipwrecked, and marched to the gallows to be hanged, only to be reprieved at the eleventh hour. All this before he was thirty years old. Smith was one of the founders of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America. He faced considerable danger from the Native Americans as well as from competing factions within the settlement itself. In the face of all this, Smith’s leadership saved the settlement from failure.

The short, burly Lincolnshireman, Captain John Smith, first among the Englishmen to establish a permanent settlement in the New World, was almost as controversial in death as he had been in life. In American history books he is portrayed as dauntless, energetic and staunch. Even in English history little is said about his life before he established and, for a time, ruled Jamestown settlement in what later became Virginia. But John Smith was already an almost legendary figure before he sailed for the New World. For centuries historians have branded Captain Smith a liar. But John Smith simply had the misfortune to live a life so colourful that ordinary people could not believe anyone capable of his achievements. Quite often he very narrowly managed to survive. Recently his flamboyant tales have been proven not just highly probable but true. John Smith lived a lifelong adventure, perhaps the 'least' memorable of his exploits being the questionable event of his life being saved by the Indian girl Pocahontas. More than three hundred years after his passing, the dispassionate judgements of contemporary historians show John Smith to have been very much a man of his time.

A biography of John Smith, the British explorer and leader who helped allow Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North American, to survive.

This concise biography paints a rich and detailed portrait of one of America's most intriguing founding fathers. Historian Thompson guides readers through annotated selections of Smith's most important and compelling writings.

In April 1607, twelve-year-old Sam Collier and a group of Englishmen landed in North America. Arriving as an assistant to the solider John Smith, Sam was excited to discover what adventures lay before him in the new land soon to be known as Virginia. But the months ahead would soon prove to be a harsh test. Facing sickness and starvation and sudden attack, Sam had to use all his wits if he were to survive. Could Sam and his fellow settlers trust Virginia’s Indians to help them? Could they learn to survive in this strange new land?