This Pulitzer Prize awarded historical account of the founding of New England is a study of the discovery and first settlement of the region; the genesis of the religious and political ideas which there took root and flourished; the geographic and other factors which shaped its economic development; the beginnings of that English overseas empire, of which it formed a part; and the early formulation of thought-on both sides of the Atlantic-regarding imperial problems. _x000D_ Contents:_x000D_ The American Background_x000D_ Staking Out Claims_x000D_ The Race for Empire_x000D_ Some Aspects of Puritanism_x000D_ The First Permanent Settlement_x000D_ New England and the Great Migration_x000D_ An English Opposition Becomes a New England Oligarchy_x000D_ The Growth of a Frontier_x000D_ Attempts to Unify New England_x000D_ Cross-Currents in the Confederacy_x000D_ The Defeat of the Theocracy_x000D_ The Theory of Empire_x000D_ The Reassertion of Imperial Control_x000D_ The Inevitable Conflict_x000D_ Loss of the Massachusetts Charter_x000D_ An Experiment in Administration_x000D_ The New Order