Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Really snarky book. It is an important subject, but any writer who can reduce the causes of immigration from Britain in the 17th century to the idea that England had classes and there were too many idle people is not an historian. Her basic thesis is that there was no upward mobility which is patently absurd. Isenberg also takes random pot shot at an odd assortment of people, such as the Quaker proprietors of Pennsylvania without noting their efforts to end slavery, Anneke Bogarus of New Amsterdam (a Dutch colony) who far from being dumped in New Amsterdam was employed as a midwife by the Dutch East India Co and died owning several estates. Her language in referring to poor people is offensive and completely unsympathetic to the situations that would lead people to mortgage themselves and their children to go to a vast, dangerous place and build a country. Nasty, badly written book.