Horn, James

(James P.P. Horn)

PERSONAL: Married; wife's name Sally; children: Ben, Lizzie. Education: University of Sussex, D.Phil., 1982.

ADDRESSES: Office․John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, 313 1st St., Williamsburg, VA 23187. E-mail—jhorn@cwf.org.

CAREER: University of Brighton, England, head of the School of Historical and Critical Studies; Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA, visiting editor of publications; Thomas Jefferson Foundation, International Center for Jefferson Studies, Charlottesville, VA, Saunders Director; Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA, began as deputy research division administrator and director of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, became director of research and O'Neill Director of the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fulbright scholar; research fellow, Omohundro Institute, American Council of Learned Societies, Charles Warren Center at Harvard University, and the Royal Historical Society.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Ida Altman) "To Make America": European Emigration in the Early Modern Period, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1991.

Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1994.

(Editor, with Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf) The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic ("Jeffersonian America" series), University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 2002.

A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: James Horn, a scholar of Colonial America, has written or edited a number of books about early American history; he is the author of A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. The history covers the period from the Jamestown colony's beginnings in 1607 to 1622, the year after it was attacked by the Pamunkey Native American tribe. Although Horn touches on the foundations of the colony, he concentrates more on day-to-day events and the settlers' methods of surviving, especially their dependence on the Powhatan Native Americans who supplied them with food.

Critics reacted to the book with enthusiasm. Booklist reviewer Gilbert Taylor called the history "a solid rendition of the [Jamestown] saga." Jonathan Yardley wrote in the Washington Post that A Land As God Made It is "an exemplary account of the settlement and development of Jamestown" and commented that Horn's "treatment of the Indian tribes and their leaders is extensive and fair but never sentimental…. All in all, an absolutely terrific book."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 1, 2005, Gilbert Taylor, review of A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America, p. 20.

Publishers Weekly, August 22, 2005, review of A Land As God Made It, p. 55.

Washington Post, October 25, 2005, Jonathan Yardley, review of A Land As God Made It, p. C8.