The Story of America Author:Reader's Digest The awesome panorama of people, places, objects, and events presented in this book took place in an incredibly short period of time. If we take as a beginning date the first meeting of the House of Burgesses in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, in 1976 we have a 357-year history of organized government in the United States. How remarkably short this... more » time is, compared with the history of other countries. Egypt, for instance, has operated under various forms of organized government for 5,000 years!« less