America

The first Europeans to arrive in North America were Norse, traveling west from Greenland, where Erik the Red had founded a settlement around the year 985. In 1001 his son Leif is thought to have explored the northeast coast of what is now Canada and spent at least one winter there. While Norse sagas suggest that Viking sailors explored the Atlantic coast of North America down as far as the Bahamas, such claims remain unproven. The early 1600…

…town having more than 50 families to establish a grammar school (a Latin school to prepare students for college). Shortly thereafter, all the older New England colonies, except Rhode Island, followed its example. The first immigrants in New England brought their own little libraries and continued to import books from London. And as early as the 1680's, Boston booksellers were doing a thriving business in works of classical literature, history, politics, philosophy, science, theology and belles-lettres.