There is no textbook or required reading for this course. Furthermore, I couldn’t find one book that covered the early history of all of New England. However, if you wish to learn more about that history you might want to read one of the following books. Each of them covers a different aspect of New England history.
Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick. Penguin Books (2006). ISBN 0-670-03760-5 (hard cover), ISBN 978-0-14-311197-9 (paperback). This book talks about the establishment of the Plymouth Colony, and how the development and expansion of that colony led to King Philip’s War. It is available at many Monroe County branch libraries, and at the RIT library.
Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, by David Hackett Fischer. Oxford University Press (1989). ISBN 0-19-503794-4. The first 200 pages of this book talk about the New England puritans, especially their cultural history (Including quite a bit of information about their daily lives). This book is available from the history division in the Rochester central library, and from the RIT library.
First Founders: America’s Puritans and Puritanism in an Atlantic World, by Francis J. Bremer. University of New Hampshire Press (2012). ISBN 978-1-58465-959-4. This book has short biographies of a number of New England puritans of the seventeenth century.
King Philip's War: the history and legacy of America's forgotten conflict, by Eric B. Schultz and Michael J. Tougias. The Countryman Press, Woodstock, VT (1999). ISBN 0-88150-434-3 (hard cover). ISBN 0-88150-483-1 (paperback). King Philip's War was a major event in the early history of New England. This is an in-depth history of that conflict. This book is available from the history division in the Rochester central library.
A Storm of Witchcraft: the Salem trials and the American experience, by Emerson W. Baker. Oxford University Press (2015). ISBN 978-0-19-989034-7. This is an in depth history of the Salem witch trials. The author is a professor of history at Salem State University. This book is available from the business division in the Rochester central library, and from the Winton Road branch library.
New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America, by Wendy Warren. Liveright (2017). ISBN 978-1631493249. This is an excellent history of slavery in early New England. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history. The author is an assistant professor of history at Princeton University. This book is available from several Monroe County libraries.
Cod: A biography of the fish that changed the world, by Mark Kurlansky. Penguin Books (1998). ISBN 0-8027-1326-2 (hard cover), ISBN 0 14 02.7501 0 (paperback). This book is available at several of the branch libraries in Monroe County. It is a short, entertaining history of the cod fishing industry in the North Atlantic, an industry that played an important role in the history of New England well into the twentieth century.