Lora Godwin, professional hostess to the rich and feckless, makes her living being flattering, witty, and decorative. When she agrees to manage a yacht trip for a reclusive Russian oligarch and some potential business partners, she figures the worst problem she’ll face is keeping her professional distance from the sleazy yet seductive Greek playboy who seems keen to end her six-month, one-week, and three-day sexual dry spell.

But when she accidentally stumbles across a woman being held prisoner on the yacht, she finds her “to do” list suddenly includes dodging white slavers, escaping kidnappers, covering up homicides, and trying not to get pulped by the Russian mafia.

The first book in a trilogy–and in many respects the best of the bunch–The Colonial Experience is an essential interpretation of how the habits of people who lived more than two centuries ago shaped the lives of modern Americans. Boorstin shows how an undiscovered continent shattered long-standing traditions and utopian fantasies with the hard demands of everyday life far from the sophisticated centers of European civilization: “Old categories were shaken up, and new situations revealed unsuspected uses for old knowledge,” writes Boorstin. He starts with a series of penetrating essays on the Puritans of Massachusetts, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the philanthropists of Georgia, and the planters of Virginia, then tackles a set of diffuse topics that range from astronomy to language to medicine in fascinating vignettes.