Review by Judith Nasatir,
By Michael Connors
We Americans pride ourselves on America-the-melting pot, our great big gumbo of a culture that incorporates into some ever-evolving whole the customs, languages, traditions and aesthetics of other places, other times. In truth, our shores are not the only ones where this wave theory holds true. The various Caribbean islands offer an equally valid example of what happens when distinct nations colonize new territories. The built world, thankfully, provides trace evidence of all that. And that evidence is what Michael Connors sifts through so beautifully in this book. In its surviving houses, the Caribbean archipelago still yields a centuries-long epic of empire expansion by the Spanish, Dutch, English, French and Danes.