''The American Colonies'' provides a detailed and richly illustrated overview of the trials of Europeans in the New World. From the earliest primitive encampments on the Atlantic seacoast to the settled societies of the later colonial period, this book vividly describes the disastrous first years, the strained reliance on native peoples, the horrors of the African slave trade, and deteriorating relations with England, which stand in marked contrast to the hope, strength, resilience, and determination with which colonialists carved a nation out of the North American wilderness.