Historian Peter Mancall will discuss his new book on pre-colonial North America at the Concord Museum on Oct. 20.

Mancall, a University of Southern California professor, is bringing "Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000–1680" to the Concord Festival of Authors, which runs Oct. 8–30. His talk is scheduled for 7 to 8 p.m. at the museum, 53 Cambridge Turnpike.

The 752-page book is the first volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, which has produced three Pulitzer Prize winners. Published June 1, it traces North America's story from Norse explorers around the year 1000 through a wave of revolts in the late 1670s and 1680s. The book recounts how millions of Indigenous people, Europeans and Africans shaped the continent across the Atlantic basin, according to its publisher's description.

Concord is known for the 1775 battle that opened the American Revolution. Mancall's book covers the centuries before that.

"I end my book with a series of events from 1675 to 1680 to suggest that tumult, not stability, defined the American experience, and that it had for centuries," Mancall said in a May 2026 Q&A on the Oxford University Press blog.

Mancall holds the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship of the Humanities at USC and directs the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute. He served as the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University during the 2019–2020 academic year. His earlier books include "The Trials of Thomas Morton" (Yale, 2019).

The festival is managed by the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library. Registration details for the Oct. 20 event had not been posted as of Aug. 31. The Discover Concord listing names Nina Montejano as a contact.