The initial volume of what will become a multi-volume social history of the United States, this book treats the transmission of English culture to America. Fischer argues that during the period 1629 to 1775 the United States was settled by four large waves of English-speaking immigrants from different parts of Britain. These groups had many qualities in common; but what Fischer is more concerned with is how they differed from each other in `their unique folkways'
and how these folkways were transferred to America and became the basis for regional differences that have persisted to some degree down to the present. Among these were: different dialects of English; different ways of building houses, naming children, and doing much of the ordinary business of life;
different customs of courtship and marriage, ways of rearing children, and customs of inheritance; different forms of music and religion; different styles of food, dress, sports, work, and wealth; and four distinct and even contradictory conceptions of liberty.