Mayflower: a story of courage, community, and war

This gripping and compelling narrative of discovery, accommodation, community, and war, told through the lived experiences of the region's Native American and European inhabitants, will help dispel many of the myths that have come to be associated with the Pilgrims, Puritans, and American Indian leaders. Native American leaders and the Praying Indians who served as spies and scouts emerge as key figures in the unfolding drama of colonization, accommodation, and conquest. A heavy reliance on the firsthand accounts of Increase Mather, William Bradford, Mary Rowlandson, and others (including Native American oral traditions) enables Philbrick to craft a narrative that covers every significant event from 1620 through the aftermath of King Philip's War in rich and meticulous historical detail. Although the author does not use footnotes or endnotes, he includes chapter-by-chapter summaries of the sources consulted and an extensive bibliography. This is historical narrative at its best--dramatic, emotional, perceptive, and thought provoking--a great read for general readers and scholars alike. Those seeking a more scholarly treatment of the same era, however, would be better served by consulting the works of Jill Lepore, James Deetz, James Axtell, Neal Salisbury, Edmund S. Morgan, and Francis Jennings. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. J. L. Brudvig University of Mary

Departing from his customary nautical stories, including the phenomenally popular In the Heart of the Sea0 (2000), Philbrick makes landfall with the saga of the Pilgrims. By necessity, all modern writing about the founding colonists relies on William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation0 , interpreting it through modern historical sensibilities that incorporate native perspectives on the newcomers from across the ocean. Long gone is the once inculcated version of friendly Indians helping starving English religious refugees through hard times. The scholarly thesis now has the Pilgrims arriving amid coastal Indian societies that had been decimated by a pandemic. The Pilgrims appeared in 1620 as a potential ally to the weakened Pokanokets and their sachem Massasoit against neighboring enemies: the Massachusetts and the Narragansetts. Philbrick essentially recounts this reigning interpretation with sensitivity to landscape description, narrative suspense, and understanding of motivations: piety, wrath, gratitude, duplicity--a panorama of human character and historical portent is on display in Philbrick's skillful rendering. Chronologically tracking the fortunes of the alliance struck by Massasoit with Bradford, Philbrick carries events through the second generation, in whose collective hands the alliance exploded into King Philip's War of 1675-76. A sterling synthesis of sources, Philbrick's epic seems poised to become a critical and commercial hit. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2006 Booklist

In this remarkable effort, National Book Award-winner Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea) examines the history of Plymouth Colony. In the early 17th century, a small group of devout English Christians fled their villages to escape persecution, going first to Holland, then making the now infamous 10-week voyage to the New World. Rather than arriving in the summer months as planned, they landed in November, low on supplies. Luckily, they were met by the Wampanoag Indians and their wizened chief, Massasoit. In economical, well-paced prose, Philbrick masterfully recounts the desperate circumstances of both the settlers and their would-be hosts, and how the Wampanoags saved the colony from certain destruction. Indeed, there was a first Thanksgiving, the author notes, and for over 50 years the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims lived in peace, becoming increasingly interdependent. But in 1675, 56 years after the colonists' landing, Massasoit's heir, Philip, launched a confusing war on the English that, over 14 horrifying months, claimed 5,000 lives, a huge percentage of the colonies' population. Impeccably researched and expertly rendered, Philbrick's account brings the Plymouth Colony and its leaders, including William Bradford, Benjamin Church and the bellicose, dwarfish Miles Standish, vividly to life. More importantly, he brings into focus a gruesome period in early American history. For Philbrick, this is yet another award-worthy story of survival. (May 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea) provides the listener with a truly epic narrative, a fantastic tale that reveals much more than the simple myth we pull out every Thanksgiving. We see greed, stupidity, honor, bravery, suffering, hope, and deception with both the Plymouth Colony and the surrounding Native American tribes. The characters' names even ring through the ages Massasoit, Church, Bradford, Squanto, King Phillip, and Standish. From the rough ride over on the Mayflower through those first years where so many died to subsequent generations, this story is exciting from start to finish. One area that does prove surprising is the internal gamesmanship and infighting of the Native American tribes, culminating with King Phillip's War in 1675. George Guidall's narration is masterful; recommended for all public and academic libraries. Scott R. DiMarco, Mansfield Univ. of Pennsylvania (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Known for his special talent with a sea story, National Book Award-winner Philbrick (Sea of Glory, 2003, etc.) here uses the Pilgrims' perilous Atlantic crossing as mere prelude to an even more harrowing tale of survival in an alien land. From the voyage of the Mayflower to the conclusion 56 years later of King Philip's War, this is a sensitive treatment of the transplanted Europeans' encountering of and clashes with the native tribes of the New World, all of which prefigured in many important respects the development of later American colonies. The strict discipline of the Pilgrims' intense spiritual commitment, responsible in many ways for the colony's initial success, inevitably gave rise to later political and religious schisms. Notwithstanding the forging of the Mayflower Compact, their political and economic lifeline stretched,vulnerably, across the ocean. More than anything, survival depended on alliances with Native Americans, and Philbrick excels at exploding commonly accepted notions about this complicated relationship. The Pilgrims were by no means the first Europeans in New England. Explorers and fishermen had already brought contagious diseases to the continent and decimated local populations. Nor had these visitors arrived at some Eden innocent of conflict. The tribes had engaged in diplomacy and warfare for centuries; they used the Pilgrims to shift balances of power among themselves. In Philbrick's graceful retelling of a story many think they already know, the virtues and vices of each culture are given their due, and the complexities of the conflict between and among them explored. Prominent roles are assigned to such well-known names as Squanto, Samoset, Massasoit and his son Philip, who (with the help of obtuse Governor Josiah Winslow) touched off the regional war that bears his name. The Indians contended with the likes of William Bradford, Miles Standish and Benjamin Church, who appears to have lived the role of Natty Bumpo well before James Fenimore Cooper imagined such a character. A remarkably sensitive account: 21st-century readers could ask for no more insightful reinterpretation of America's founding myth. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea ) provides the listener with a truly epic narrative, a fantastic tale that reveals much more than the simple myth we pull out every Thanksgiving. We see greed, stupidity, honor, bravery, suffering, hope, and deception with both the Plymouth Colony and the surrounding Native American tribes. The characters' names even ring through the agesMassasoit, Church, Bradford, Squanto, King Phillip, and Standish. From the rough ride over on the Mayflower through those first years where so many died to subsequent generations, this story is exciting from start to finish. One area that does prove surprising is the internal gamesmanship and infighting of the Native American tribes, culminating with King Phillip's War in 1675. George Guidall's narration is masterful; recommended for all public and academic libraries.Scott R. DiMarco, Mansfield Univ. of Pennsylvania

What makes Philbrick's book so fascinating and accessible the way he turns the Pilgrim legend on its head and shakes out fresh insights from the crusty old mythology we all absorbed in grade school is present in full force in this exceptional audio version. With more than 800 audiobooks to his credit, Guidall gives the term "veteran reader" a whole new meaning. Such leading figures as William Bradford, Benjamin Church and Miles Standish of the so-called Plymouth Colony (which was not even close to Plymouth or its now-famous rock) emerge from the pages of history as understandable if not always admirable figures, and Guidall's evocations of the sadly depleted (by European diseases) Wampanoag Indians and their chief, Massasoit, are equally believable. The bitter voyage of the Seaflower (a slave ship taking captive Wampanoags to be sold in the Caribbean after a disastrous war with Massasoit's son, Philip), which rounds out Philbrick's masterful account, is treated with energy, respect and a straightforwardness that only increases its power. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 6). (June)