by James Rice ’85

This study of the Potomac River basin opens with a mystery: Why, when the region offered fertile soil and excellent fishing and hunting, was nearly threequarters of the area uninhabited on the eve of colonization? Rice uses archaeological and anthropological research, as well as scholarship on farming practices at the time, to arrive at the answer. The book’s acknowledgements salute Rice’s CC advisor T.K. Barton P’92, “who loved the English language and books and who never hesitated to identify stylistic ‘barbarisms’ when they crept into my prose.”

ISBN-13: 978-0801890321. Johns Hopkins University Press; 2009.