Empires in the Forest

From the author and photographer who brought us "a new genre of art book" in Albemarle: A Story of Landscape and American Identity comes a new collaborative effort detailing the story of our nation's birth: Jamestown and the Making of America. This beautiful work of photography and prose traces the ways in which American culture grew out of the conflict that characterized the first contact between Native Americans and Europeans. Expanding in their unique treatment of Albemarle County, the artists use photographs from our time to suggest both the ancient and recent pasts, creating a virtual experience from the Colonial era into modern times. Telling this great story in modern terms by dusting off the history to reveal the main players as fresh and alive today as they were then, Jamestown and the Making of America beautifully depicts a landscape synonymous with American history, from its tumultuous beginning through today.

Robert Llewellyn is a photographer with more than thirty books of his work in print, including Upland Virginia, The Academical Village, and Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown: America’s Historic Triangle. His book Washington, the Capital was an official diplomatic gift of the White House and State Department. He and his family live in the Albemarle countryside, an area he has photographed extensively for more than thirty years. Avery Chenoweth is a Charlottesville writer whose novel-in-stories, Wingtips, was short-listed for the Library of Virginia fiction prize and nominated for the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has written for a number of national magazines, including Harper’s, Spy, Lingua Franca, and the New York Times Magazine.