Isle of Devils, Isle of Saints

"With his first book, Michael Jarvis established himself as our generation's leading historian of colonial Bermuda. In this volume, a prequel to that monumental work, Jarvis situates the early history of Bermuda in the context of a growing English presence in the Atlantic basin in general and in relation to the development of England's mainland colonies in North America. Based on extraordinary research, Isle of Devils, Isle of Saints is the best starting point for understanding Bermuda's complex and vital history."

"Deeply researched and impressively wide-ranging, this book brings to life the early history of the Bermuda colony in what will surely become the standard work. Jarvis writes with great sensitivity to the on-the-ground experience of colonization and the process of colonial ethnogenesis. Atlantic Crucible will challenge historians to reconsider the nature of the early English Atlantic world and grapple more fully with what Bermuda, hundreds of miles from mainland North America, reveals about other colonial experiments."

"Seventeenth-century Bermuda boasted godly settlers, a staple crop, enslaved labor, and a robust maritime trade, making it a great venue for understanding colonization's intensive cultural adaptations. Jarvis's fabulous interdisciplinary intervention places Bermuda in its larger Atlantic and global contexts while also explaining its peculiar version of English expansion."

"Bermuda played a crucial role in the creation of the English Atlantic. In this beautifully written book, Michael Jarvis, this generation's acknowledged authority on Bermuda, explores the early colony's dramatic history and the vital social, religious, and economic developments that came to characterize England's seventeenth-century American empire."

"The fruit of thirty years of archival and archaeological work, this treat for Bermudians, specialists, and non-specialists alike achieves that most difficult of goals: a flowing narrative that is at once deeply engaged with multiple fields of scholarship as well as being eminently pleasurable to read."

"Michael Jarvis's stirring work contributes to our understanding of Bermuda's role in developing the English Atlantic during the formative years of the early seventeenth century and the early tensions that arose among its settlers. He provides an important history of institutions and peoples that formed in the Bermudian context."

"In dazzling depth and breadth Michael Jarvis explores how Bermuda went from being a place to avoid at all costs to a flourishing laboratory for colonial and religious design and a center of English interests."

"Rich and rewarding."