The Growth of the Modern West Indies Author:Gordon K. Lewis The Growth of the Modern West Indies was among the first publications to provide a comprehensive view of the British Caribbean, including Bermuda and the Bahamas as well as the small Leeward and Windward islands. In its quest to explore the political culture of the English-speaking Caribbean, it also became the first study to focus specifically ... more »on this aspect of the modern Caribbean. The book covers the crucial inter-war years from the 1920s to the early 1960s and provides in-depth analyses of the forces that contributed to the shaping of West Indian society. Among the most outstanding features of the book is Lewis's use of a variety of written sources including recently published monographs, articles in obscure places and an array of newspapers from almost all the islands discussed in the study, as well as material from his own travels across the region. In recent years, a number of similar books have been published, extending the survey of Caribbean society up to the present, but few have equaled, much less surpassed this Lewis masterpiece in its clever combination of political biography and social history or the sheer brilliance of his intellectual and in-depth analysis. This ?classic' of West Indian historiography is being reissued without revision but the Introduction to this 2004 edition by Franklin Knight re-introduces Lewis to a new generation and underscores the continuing relevance of this text to an understanding of the modern Caribbean.« less