Books & Media

Vintage Embossed Metal and Wood Ink Blotter

A lovely accessory for your desk, this Vintage Embossed Metal and Wood Ink Blotter is a must-have for letter writing with ink. The base is made of wood and the silver-tone embossed decorative exterior features a beaded edge and ornamental motifs. We...

Wood and Bronze Pen Stand

Display your quill pen in style with this small Wood and Bronze Pen Stand. This holder looks great on your desk at home or take it to your next re-enactment inside your traveling desk for a period-appropriate accessory. Features Can hold any type of...

You Can Learn Children's Craft Kit - Weaving

Teach your kids a skill from the early days of American life with You Can Learn Craft Kits! This children's weaving kit allows kids to imagine and experience what life was like in the past when young girls and boys learned useful skills to contribute to...

The Hammerman of Williamsburg DVD

The Hammerman in Williamsburg DVD is back from the archives! Produced in 1973, this 38 minute film features a master blacksmith who explains why the "hammerman" was one of the most vital craftsmen in town. Year-round work for the blacksmith kept the...

Shrubs: An Old Fashioned Drink For Modern Times

In his book Shrubs: An Old Fashioned Drink for Modern Times, Michael Dietsch took the mixology community by storm when he brought back a popular drink from colonial times, the shrub. Not the green, leafy kind of shrub that grows in the ground, but a...

Brown Leather Journal 5" x 7"

This handsome Brown Leather Journal is hand-crafted in Italy. The journal features a wrap-around leather strap, a refillable lined journal, and an extra pocket to stash papers, letters, or other documents. We think it makes the perfect travel journal to...

American Stories

American Stories by Paul Aron follows the evolution of our founding stories and myths and how they spread far and wide throughout our history. The story of the cherry tree, for example, tells us nothing about George Washington’s actual...

The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

Go on a literary journey with preeminent legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar! In his 800+ page book, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, Amar covers the history of the American Constitution's formative decades.  When...

Indienne Rug Mouse Pad

Spread a little tradition wherever you need to use your computer mouse ... and protect your table. With a detailed medallion and floral motif, this mouse pad will add a touch of rich elegance to your office or living room. Images of antique carpets in...

Changing Keys: Keyboard Instruments for America

The transition from harpsichord to piano and the accompanying shift in taste between 1700 and 1830 was a musical revolution in revolutionary times. So, also, was the transition from London's monopoly on the manufacture of instruments to a burgeoning...

Norfolk Naval Shipyard

Norfolk Naval Shipyard has a long history that predates the United States of America. Founded in 1767 as the Gosport Shipyard, it has been burned and rebuilt three times, once to prevent it from getting into the hands of the newly independent state of...

We the People Journal

Draw inspiration from the words of the United States Constitution as you pen your own thoughts with this We the People Journal! This hardbound journal features the preamble to the U.S. Constitution on the cover with lined pages inside. Makes a great gift...

Aged Parchment Notecard Set

This set of elegant Aged Parchment Notecards is ideal for writing with ink or practicing calligraphy. Pair with our other from Freund-Mayer writing accessories in our shop for a thoughtful and fun gift. Features Set of 8 folded note cards with 8...

You Can Learn Children's Craft Kit - Embroidered Drawstring Bag

Teach children a skill from the early days of American life with this "Be Happy" Drawstring Bag Sewing and Embroidery Craft kit from the You Can Learn series of craft kits for kids. Children can experience and imagine what life was like in the past when...

A Brief Treatise on Tomb & Grave Stones of the Eighteenth Century

An introductory guide and study resource for understanding the process of Eighteenth Century Gravestone carving, as well as a primer on identifying carvers of the stones. Includes proper notes for academic study thereon, along with many pictures for...

Children's Melody Harp Songs

Twelve traditional children's songs young ones can play instantly: A Hunting We Will Go, A Tisket, A Tasket, Are You Sleeping?, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Froggie Went A Courtin', Hickory Dickory Dock, I'm A Little Teapot, Mary Had A Little Lamb, Polly Wolly...

Painters and Paintings in the Early American South

Painters and Paintings in the Early American South by the Juli Grainger, Curator at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, gathers into one volume a large body of materials related to the paintings and the artists of the American South between 1564 and...

Virginia Women: Their Lives and Times, Volume 1

Virginia Women is the first of two volumes exploring the history of Virginia women through the lives of exemplary and remarkable individuals. This collection of seventeen essays, written by established and emerging scholars, recovers the stories and...

Yorktown, Virginia: A Brief History

Yorktown's history is often overshadowed by its pivotal role in the Revolutionary War. The site of the British surrender has held several victory commemorations over the past two hundred years. Yorktown also was a thriving colonial port and the site of...

First Principles

In First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author Thomas E. Ricks offers a revelatory book about the...

Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck and A New History of America's Origin

In Marooned, Joseph Kelly reexamines the history of Jamestown and comes to a radically different and decidedly American interpretation of these first Virginians. In this gripping account of shipwrecks and mutiny in America's earliest settlements, Kelly...

The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America

Over the course of the eighteenth century, Anglo-Americans purchased an unprecedented number and array of goods. The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America investigates these diverse artifacts—from portraits and city views to...

Hero of Two Worlds

From the bestselling author of The Storm Before the Storm and host of the Revolutions podcast comes the thrilling story of the Marquis de Lafayette’s lifelong quest to defend the principles of liberty and equality. "Few in history can match the...

Craft: An American History

At the center of the United States' economic and social development, according to conventional wisdom, are industry and technology—while craftspeople and handmade objects are relegated to a bygone past. Renowned historian Glenn Adamson turns that...

Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs

Kathleen Brown examines the origins of racism and slavery in British North America from the perspective of gender. Both a basic social relationship and a model for other social hierarchies, gender helped determine the construction of racial categories...

Flexible Sealing Wax Tri-Pack - Blue, White, Pink

This Flexible Sealing Wax Tri-Pack makes the perfect companion to our brass letter seals! Made to withstand the modern postal system, this mailable sealing wax can be used on greeting cards and invitations for added historical charm, or on...

The U.S. Constitution and Other Writings

The U.S. Constitution and Other Writings is part of the Leather-bound Classics series and is a collection of the crucial documents, speeches, and other writings that shaped the United States. In addition to the Constitution, readers can review the...

Thirteen Clocks: How Race United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence

In his celebrated account of the origins of American unity, John Adams described July 1776 as the moment when thirteen clocks managed to strike at the same time. So how did these American colonies overcome long odds to create a durable union capable of...

Hand Stitched Brown Leather Journal

A marvel of craftsmanship and quality, this Hand-Stitched Leather Journal is made in Italy by artisans practicing centuries old techniques. The soft brown leather cover features straps to protect the interior rag paper pages which are stitched by hand...

Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington

In Realistic Visionary, renowned George Washington scholar Peter Henriques seeks to humanize the first president without diminishing him. Henriques’s Washington makes mistakes, is sensitive to criticism, and is slow to accept blame, but he is also...

Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840

In the first comprehensive history of the fraternity known to outsiders primarily for its secrecy and rituals, Steven Bullock traces Freemasonry through its first century in America. He follows the order from its origins in Britain and its introduction...

Dunmore's New World: The Extraordinary Life of a Royal Governor in Revolutionary America

Dunmore's New World tells the stranger-than-fiction story of Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia, whose long-neglected life boasts a measure of scandal and intrigue rare in the annals of the colonial world. Dunmore not only issued the first...

Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia

In this provocative reinterpretation of one of the best-known events in American history, Woody Holton shows that when Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and other elite Virginians joined their peers from other colonies in declaring independence from...

The Indian World of George Washington Book by Colin G. Calloway

Colin G. Calloway's biography, The Indian World of George Washington, reveals in full the relationship between nation builder George Washington and the Native leaders he dealt with intimately across the decades: Shingas, Tanaghrisson, Guyasuta,...

Inventing Disaster: The Culture of Calamity

When hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and other disasters strike, we count our losses, search for causes, commiserate with victims, and initiate relief efforts. Amply illustrated and expansively researched, Inventing Disaster: The Culture of Calamity...

Virginia 1619: Slavery and Freedom in the Making of English America

Virginia 1619 provides an opportunity to reflect on the origins of English colonialism around the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic world. As the essays here demonstrate, Anglo-Americans have been simultaneously experimenting with representative government...

Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence

We commonly think of the American Revolution as simply the war for independence from British colonial rule. But, of course, that independence actually applied to only a portion of the American population—African Americans would still be bound in...

First and Always: A New Portrait of George Washington

George Washington may be the most famous American who ever lived, and certainly is one of the most admired. While surrounded by myths, it is no myth that the man who led Americans’ fight for independence and whose two terms in office largely...

Inventing the American Flag

With gorgeous four-color reproductions of an amazing array of art from diverse cultures and eras, Inventing the American Flag explores the symbolism of the national flag and investigates why the founding fathers chose the images they did to represent the...

Mapping Virginia Book

Mapping Virginia: From the Age of Exploration to the Civil War by William C. Wooldridge is sure to become a treasured addition to your library. As one of the chief gateways to the earliest exploration and settlement of the North American continent,...

Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660-1740

Challenging the generally accepted belief that the introduction of racial slavery to America was an unplanned consequence of a scarce labor market, Anthony Parent, Jr., contends that during a brief period spanning the late seventeenth and early...

Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Migration and the Making of the United States

Who had the right to live within the newly united states of America? In the country's founding decades, federal and state politicians debated which categories of people could remain and which should be subject to removal. The result was a white...

1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy

1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy by James Horn details a year in which American democracy and American slavery emerged hand in hand. Along the banks of the James River, Virginia, during an oppressively hot spell in the middle...

Family, Slavery, and Love in the Early American Republic

One of the finest historians of her generation, Jan Ellen Lewis (1949-2018) transformed our understanding of the early U.S. Republic. Her groundbreaking essays defined the emerging fields of gender and emotions history and reframed traditional...

Fatal Revolutions: Natural History, West Indian Slavery, and the Routes of American Literature

Drawing on letters, illustrations, engravings, and neglected manuscripts, Christopher Iannini connects two dramatic transformations in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world--the emergence and growth of the Caribbean plantation system and the rise of...

They Were Her Property

Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, They Were Her Property makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show...

The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution

When the Revolutionary War began, the odds of a united, continental effort to resist the British seemed nearly impossible. Few on either side of the Atlantic expected thirteen colonies to stick together in a war against their cultural cousins. In this...