The Virginia Venture: American Colonization and English Society, 1580-1660 was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2022, and shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society's Gladstone Prize the following year.

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"Based on impeccable archival research and rich in detailed illustrative material, The Virginia Venture presents a fascinating portrait of the myriad social and economic connections that shaped how people interpreted and intervened in the emergence of an English Atlantic."—James Horn

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"[A]n important and compassionate consideration of how ordinary people became caught up, and complicit, in ‘the Virginia venture’, offering a much-needed and deeply researched social history of colonisation and its effects on early modern England. One of its biggest strengths is the way it situates women within this topic, offering an integrated, relational look at colonialism across society. Like tobacco itself, colonisation—even when it ceased to be ‘unfamiliar or strange’—could not be ‘given up’, and has been bound up with English life ever since."

—The English Historical Review

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"In this lucid, colorful and original study, Misha Ewen paints a portrait of early Virginia not just in relation to England but through it, from the perspective of the eastern side of the Atlantic. Many skillfully drawn vignettes of the everyday form a bigger picture in The Virginia Venture, demonstrating how extensively the colony lived in English consciousness and culture before it was fully viable, and how in the end this interest was crucial for its success."—Malcolm Gaskill