Old World, New World: Great Britain and America from the Beginning

New York, New York, U.S.A.: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008. Book. New. Cloth. First Edition. 8vo. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008. First edition. 8vo. Cloth binding, 848 pp. Because of the bonds of language and the common heritage of representative government, the "special relationship" between the U.S. and Great Britain may seem natural, inevitable, and even eternal. This ambitious, comprehensive, and engrossing examination of that relationship over four centuries illustrates convincingly that this alliance is of recent vintage and that it has also been characterized by tension, divergent interests, and occasional warfare. Burk is a native Californian who lives in and teaches history at University College in London, and she strives effectively to explain the connections as perceived from both sides of the Atlantic. Burk illustrates how the loyalty that colonists felt to the Crown frayed as the commercial interests of colonists and the Mother Country differed. In the nineteenth century, British and American politicians and ordinary citizens were rivals in the fur trade and opponents in the War of 1812. Even in the last century, the alliance tempered in war has seen its share of ups and downs. A superbly researched and well-written account that will be of great interest to both scholars and general readers. New in new dust jacket, protected with an archival-quality mylar cover..