Book Description
From the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea—winner of the National Book Award—the startling story of the Plymouth Colony
From the perilous ocean crossing to the shared bounty of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim settlement of New England has become enshrined as our most sacred national myth. Yet, as bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick reveals in his spellbinding new book, the true story of the Pilgrims is much more than the well-known tale of piety and sacrifice; it is a fifty-five-year epic that is at once tragic, heroic, exhilarating, and profound.
The MayflowerÂ's religious refugees arrived in Plymouth Harbor during a period of crisis for Native Americans as disease spread by European fishermen devastated their populations. Initially the two groups—the Wampanoags, under the charismatic and calculating chief Massasoit, and the Pilgrims, whose pugnacious military officer Miles Standish was barely five feet tall—maintained a fragile working relationship. But within decades, New England would erupt into King PhilipÂ's War, a savagely bloody conflict that nearly wiped out English colonists and natives alike and forever altered the face of the fledgling colonies and the country that would grow from them.
With towering figures like William Bradford and the distinctly American hero Benjamin Church at the center of his narrative, Philbrick has fashioned a fresh and compelling portrait of the dawn of American history—a history dominated right from the start by issues of race, violence, and religion.
Customer Reviews:
Mayflower.......2007-10-18
The history presented by Nathaniel Philbrick is very interesting and gives a person a more personable view of the Mayflower families and times (as well as of the Indians in New England). I found his information to be quite complete and filled in a lot of history that has not been published before that I know of.
Unraveling a Myth.......2007-10-18
" Wherever they first set foot on the American continent, it wasn't Plymouth, and it certainly wasn't Plymouth Rock. The first Thanksgiving (in 1621) was indeed attended by Indians as well as Pilgrims, but they didn't sit at the tidy table depicted in Victorian popular art; they "stood, squatted, or sat on the ground as they clustered around outdoor fires, where the deer and birds turned on wooden spits and where pottages -- stews into which varieties of meats and vegetables were thrown -- simmered invitingly."
- Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick
How many of us grew up with myths about the Pilgrims and about the first Thanksgiving? We all believed that the Pilgrims and the Indians sat at a beautiful table laden with turkey, cranberries and all of the fixings. Not only was that not the case, they certainly didn't set foot on Plymouth Rock.
Philbrick puts these myths to rest. And he tells us about the beginning of our new country and what was the basis for its foundation. Our myths contained stories about Massasoit and Squanto, Bradford and Winslow and, of course, Miles Standish.
One of the major accounts in the book was that of the King Philip's War. We learned that it really did not have to be. Both sides could have developed solutions which respected the goodness in each other as well as the differences.
We learned about how the Indians were shipped off to foreign places during this war and were separated from all of their families and tribes....never to be heard from again (having been made slaves). Only a few ever made it back like Squanto, for example.
Philbrick discusses why the war occurred after so many years of peace and why the descendants of Massasoit and of Bradford and Winslow came to see things differently than their fathers; losing sight of the faith and the respect for the individual that their forefathers had long revered. They also blocked out the memory of how they all needed one another to survive.
The Mayflower Compact, we learn, is one document that laid the foundations for the country that America was to become. Yet, our forefathers had to live through a nightmare of a war (of their own making) where both sides suffered tremendously. It took many years after the war ended to ever recoup even a portion of what was lost.
Philbrick's book is a story of courage, community and war on both sides as well as a story of how our forefathers lost sight of what the Indians had done for their ancestors and their fathers and what was owed to these people. In doing so, they also lost sight of the need for diplomacy and how to work together to come up with solutions that would be good for both the settlers as well as the Indians.
MAYFLOWER has won many awards and the book deserves all of them. What I have come away with deals first with the myth. This was unraveled for me so that I could understand and gain knowledge of the facts of these early settlements. I learned what worked, what didn't work and why the peaceful compact fell apart. I also learned that we can gain a lot from understanding our past and that we do not have to make the same mistakes over again.
Nathaniel Philbrick has given us hope that our future does not always have to resemble our past. He wrote, "When violence and fear grip a society, there is an almost overpowering temptation to demonize the enemy. But some on both sides refused to succumb. They were the ones whose rambunctious and intrinsically rebellious faith in humanity finally brought the war to an end, and they are the heroes of this story."
During the times that we face now, our heroes can continue to be those leaders and citizens who strive to focus on the faith in humanity and celebrate our differences as well as our similarities finding solutions rather than reasons to turn away from each other.
Four Stars: B+ (Recommend Highly)
Bentley/2007
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Not what I was hoping for.......2007-10-13
I couldn't get into this book because it was very different from what I thought it would be. I expected "Mayflower" to be a detailed account of why the pilgrims decided to journey to America, and also a vivid description of what life aboard the Mayflower was actually like. The book did cover those things, but only for a few short pages. Most of the book is devoted to the history of Plymouth Colony and King Philip's War. Author Nataniel Philbrick does an excellent job of shooting down the myths many people believe about what the pilgrim settlement was actually like, but I was much more interested in reading about the actual Mayflower journey and was disappointed that so little information about that event was included in this 400+ page book. "Mayflower" should be called "King Philip's War" so readers know what they're getting into.
Educational book.......2007-09-26
This is a very informative, accurate writing of our history. More people should read and know the real history of our country.
Not what I expected, but.......2007-09-16
the book was still a captivating piece of literature. I read this directly after reading In the Heart of the Sea by Philbrick, and was expecting the same type of story. That was not the case however. The title is a bit misleading in that one thinks they are going to be reading (or at least I did) a story of the journey. The subtitle should have cued me in. The book is about the struggle between the settlers and the natives more so than it is about the voyage to the new world. All that being said, I still loved the book. I gave the book four stars because I wish there was more about the actual voyage, and I think the title is a little misleading. All in all though, it is a superb piece of literature.
Customer Reviews:
African-American History done well.......2006-11-01
Peter H. Wood did a thoroughly researched well written history of African-Americans in South Carolina from 1670 to the Stono Rebellion. I am African-American and read this book for the first time in college; it was assigned to me by a terrific professor, (Thomas R. Hietala). I came to that class with my own concept of what slavery was and what it meant; this book totally challenged me to question my perceptions of slavery. I believed the stereotypic view that Africans were brought here and taught skills here and picked cotton and it was all misery and this book and others he assigned showed me how our modern vision of slavery is very shallow.
This book focuses on the rice growing region of South Carolina and it shows how slavers concentrated on capturing Africans from the rice coast because of their agricultural knowledge and skills; he shed a light on who these African people were before slavery. It explores how the cash crop in South Carolina came to be rice. How South Carolina was established as a colony of Barbados and the slave owners in South Carolina were formerly working class overseers who worked for the royal owners of Sugar Plantations in Barbados and later became land and slave owners in South Carolina; in both places (Barbados and South Carolina) the populations became Black majorities.
It also shows how slavery system in South Carolina evolved for the enslaved from something that was oppressive and informal into something brutal, permanent and hopeless. The evolution of slavery also changed the owners as they became a numerical minority the also became increasingly paranoid, determined to establish brutal absolute authority over the slaves and blinded by their own propaganda.
It seems even more astonishing they began to believe that Africans were better off and happy under a system that enslaved them. The most powerful thing Professor Hietala ever said in our class was "Never forget that slaves always wanted ownership of their own bodies and the power to direct their own lives and destinies; nothing was more important."
At times I think historians forget this when writing about African-American slaves. Wood understands this and he also shows respect for how enslaved Africans not only yearned for their freedom but how they planned and took risks for their freedom. He explores in depth the complexity and challenges of their struggle in choosing to look at the Stono Rebellion and the events that lead up to this big risk.
The story Wood tells begins with the history of these two communities (Barbados overseers who become South Carolina planters and enslaved Africans) continues with the development of the system of slavery in South Carolina and climaxes at the Stono Rebellion. The most fascinating thing about this act of Resistance is how close they came to success. When reading it for the first time I found myself saddened that they did not succeed because their success could have rewritten African-American History by altering the issues that sparked the Civil War and subsequent events; Reconstruction, Jim-Crow and the Civil Rights Movement. In essence their success could have changed my history and had far reaching implications with respect to who I am.
I think it is worth reading because of the history it explores and because Wood is an excellent researcher and writer. He not only uncovers the history but he exposes readers to the lives of enslaved Africans in a new way by portraying them as whole human beings who had a life before slavery. He treats with respect their existence and culture in Africa and acknowledges how it (African culture) influenced the economy and agriculture of South Carolina and by inference the South. It is a brilliant well researched and written work, as a student I came to appreciate that brilliant scholars were not always brilliant writers, Wood excels at both. I recommend it highly to any one interested in learning more about African-American history.
Well written....kind of slow.......2005-02-21
Black mojority is a momagram written to examinne the life of an african american in carolina during the colonial era. While it is very thourough in ts analysis of the slaves role and growth durning this time, it moves very slowly. I was assigned to read this book for a history course i was taking in college, so this wasn't a book i would noramlly pick up and read. I did find that i learned may things i did not know about this time and slaves. I found it all very facinating. this is a great book to read if you plan to major in history. It is thorough and well put together, all in all a great book to learn and grow from.
Good Study of Africans in 18th Century South Carolina.......2003-03-11
Peter Wood presents a very thorough account of Africans in South Carolina in the 1700s. From the first Africans to arrive on a Spanish expedition in 1526 and the African migrants arriving from Barbados in 1670 to the social tensions of the 1700s, Wood covers such topics as cattle raising, rice cultivation, disease, family life, religion, Black English, growing anxieties between whites and blacks, and the Stono Rebellion in 1739. Blacks became the majority population in South Carolina by the early 1700s. They were brought in as laborers and were immune to many lowland diseases that led to the higher mortality and morbidity rate among European settlers. Interestingly, the sickle cell trait heightened Africans' resistance to malaria. What I gathered from this work is that, while Africans were enslaved by the whites, Africans shaped South Carolina more than any other group through such things as their knowledge of cattle grazing, rice planting and cleaning, etc. Interesting book but, due to the narrowness of the study, I would only recommend it to those interested in black history or South Carolina.
Excellent Overview.......2001-11-16
This study of slavery in early SC is well researched and well written, a social history told in narrative style with a clearly defined chronological structure. Makes a great companion to Philip Morgan's Slave Counterpoint.
Fascinating history, told well.......2000-03-07
Peter H. Wood describes the experience of Blacks in early South Carolina. In the initial stages of colonization, planters welcomed the skills of Africans, encouraging Black initiative in many projects. Some Africans herded cattle and cultivated rice and indigo, as they had in various parts of Africa. Eventually, however, landowners shifted to intensive plantation development. Planters then sought to limit the strikingly independent economic pursuits of enslaved African-Americans. Wood sets the stage for the outbreak of the Stono Rebellion in 1739; he then chronicles the revolt with a combination of magnificent scholarship and tremendous narrative skill.
Book Description
This book explores the evolution of American war, showing how the first war waged against Indian noncombatant populations and their agricultural resources became the standard method of war employed by early Americans and which ultimately defined their military heritage. The bloodthirsty American conquest of Indian communities east of the Mississippi River helps demonstrate how early Americans embraced warfare shaped by extravagant violence and focused on conquest. Grenier provides a major revision in understanding the place of warfare directed on noncombatants in the American military tradition, and his conclusions are relevant to understand US â€~special operations’ in the War on Terror.
Customer Reviews:
Half the story.......2005-10-20
Grenier only provides half the story. He ignores a sizeable body of research on Native American warfare that suggests an Indian way of war "waged against Indian noncombatant populations and their agricultural resources" existed long before Europeans ever set foot on the continent. Grenier also overlooks the research on global primative warfare exemplified by Keeley, which suggests war waged on noncombatants has a long history in all societies, not just European or Indian ones. By only providing half of the story, he allows the reader to assume the worst, as all the eminent scholars quoted above certainly did. Recommend Starkey, or Malone, or Chet instead.
Excellant work.......2005-03-10
This is an excellent scholarly work that discusses how Americans waged war against Native Americans on the frontier from 1609 until 1814. The author contends that the early Americans developed a way of war that targeted non-combatants by attacking villages and destroying crops and deliberately targeting women and children. The author does not pull any punches and takes a harsh look at the practice of paying bounties for scalps and the effect that had on the conduct of frontier warfare. He also traces the development of the rangers and discusses how they did or did not integrate with regular forces. My only minor complaint is that the maps could be better in order to follow the narrative, but don't let that stop you from reading this book.
Book Description
The comprehensive history of a system of faith that shaped the nation.
Customer Reviews:
An insightful look at a noble people.......2006-05-20
The Puritans are often maligned today as a 'narrow minded' 'intolerant' group of religious 'extremists' who hanged people they believed to be Witches and actually banned Christmas
This book shows them in a more honest light. A people who as a group did their flawed best to form a just and honest society. They actually managed to achieve it.
This is the story of the people whose ideology actually became the foundation of this nation.
Easy to read. The material is easy to understand. A good book to have for anyone interested in Colonial American history or for that matter insights into how groups work.
Excellent Overview.......2004-10-19
This is a very successful attempt to produce an overview of the Puritan experience in New England. Arguably the most important single group on American history, this relatively small collection of religously inspired immigrants generated a number of cultural and political trends that continue as important features of American life. Bremer provides the basic narrative structure, social and demographic history, and theological history of the Puritan experiment in a concise and well written book of less than 250 pages. Readers will be struck with how features of the Puritan experience continue to resonate today, particularly certain aspects of the Puritan religous experience. Also impressive is how aspects of Puritan history in the 17th century prefigured events of the later 18th century. The New England colonies' conflicts with the centralizing tendency of the later Stuart kings, the resentment towards imperialistic economic policies, the emphasis on relatively broad political participation, all have important parallels in the struggles that lead up to the Revolution. Not surprisingly, religion occupies a central place in this book. Bremer does a particularly good job of describing the Puritans' sense of themselves as a chosen people, their involvement in a trans-Atlantic religous culture, and their complex theology. Perhaps the only deficiency, and this is relatively minor, is Bremer's less thorough treatment of the 18th century. While the narrative continues up to the death of Jonathan Edwards in 1758, the treatment of the 18th century is more superficial than of the 17th century. This is probably an understandable result of Bremer's desire to keep this book concise. There is also a very nice annotated bibliography. In using the latter, readers should bear in mind that this edition was published in 1995 and there have been important works published since 1995. There is no reference, for example, to George Marsden's outstanding biography of Jonathan Edwards, which was published last year. Overall, this is a very valuable distillation of the broad and impressive body of scholarship concerning these fascinating people.
Book Description
The 250 years covered by Silver, Trade, and War marked the era of commercial capitalism, that bridge between late medieval and modern times. Spain, peripheral to western Europe in 1500, produced American treasure in silver, which Spanish convoys bore from Portobelo and Veracruz on the Carribbean coast across the Atlantic to Spain in exchange for European goods shipped from Sevilla (later, Cadiz). Spanish colonialism, the authors suggest, was the cutting edge of the early global economy. America's silver permitted Spain to graft early capitalistic elements onto its late medieval structures, reinforcing its patrimonialism and dynasticism. However, the authors argue, silver gave Spain an illusion of wealth, security, and hegemony, while its system of "managed" transatlantic trade failed to monitor silver flows that were beyond the control of government officials. While Spain's intervention buttressed Hapsburg efforts at hegemony in Europe, it induced the formation of protonationalist state formations, notably in England and France. The treaty of Utrecht (1714) emphasized the lag between developing England and France, and stagnating Spain, and the persistence of Spain's late medieval structures. These were basic elements of what the authors term Spain's Hapsburg "legacy."
Over the first half of the eighteenth century, Spain under the Bourbons tried to contain expansionist France and England in the Caribbean and to formulate and implement policies competitors seemed to apply successfully to their overseas possessions, namely, a colonial compact. Spain's policy planners (proyectistas) scanned abroad for models of modernization adaptable to Spain and its American colonies without risking institutional change. The second part of the book, "Toward a Spanish-Bourbon Paradigm," analyzes the projectors' works and their minimal impact in the context of the changing Atlantic scene until 1759. By then, despite its efforts, Spain could no longer compete successfully with England and France in the international economy. Throughout the book a colonial rather than metropolitan prism informs the authors' interpretation of the major themes examined.
Silver, Trade, and War is about men and markets, national rivalries, diplomacy and conflict, and the advancement or stagnation of states.
Book Description
The Antinomian controversyâa seventeenth-century theological crisis concerning salvationâwas the first great intellectual crisis in the settlement of New England. Transcending the theological questions from which it arose, this symbolic controversy became a conflict between power and freedom of conscience. David D. Hall’s thorough documentary history of this episode sheds important light on religion, society, and gender in early American history.
This new edition of the 1968 volume, published now for the first time in paperback, includes an expanding bibliography and a new preface, treating in more detail the prime figures of Anne Hutchinson and her chief clerical supporter, John Cotton. Among the documents gathered here are transcripts of Anne Hutchinson’s trial, several of Cotton’s writings defending the Antinomian position, and John Winthrop’s account of the controversy. Hall’s increased focus on Hutchinson reveals the harshness and excesses with which the New England ministry tried to discredit her and reaffirms her place of prime importance in the history of American women.
Average customer rating:
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Settlers on the Eastern Shore: The British Colonies in North America, 1607-1750 (Library of American History)
John A. Scott
Manufacturer: Facts on File
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ASIN: 0816023271 |
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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Land: The Plunder of Early America
Daniel M. Friedenberg
Manufacturer: Prometheus Books
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ASIN: 0879757221 |
Book Description
The Great Riots of New York presents an illustrated, fast-paced and chilling account of the major players and victims of over ten riots that rocked New York City from 1712–1873. Joel Tyler Headley’s main purpose in writing this account over a century ago was to show his appreciation for the metropolitan police force, for he believed they “saved the city” during the Draft Riots. Using eyewitness testimonies by military authorities, policemen, and those involved, and extracting facts from available archives, pamphlets, and newspapers, Headley discusses with precise detail such uprisings as The Negro Riots of 1712–1741, The Doctors’ Riots of 1788, and the Abolitionist Riots of 1834 and 1835, among many others. Headley creates a gripping narrative and writes with incredible flow, providing us with detailed accounts of these riots without overbearing us too much with his own opinions on the riots, the people who rioted, and the issues that were being rioted against. Out of print for fifteen years, The Great Riots of New York remains a fascinating history of how far nonviolent citizens will go in order to have their voices heard.
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- Solid Primary Material on New Netherlands
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Correspondence 1654-1658 (New Netherland Documents Series, Volume 12)
Peter Stuyvesant
Manufacturer: Syracuse University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Historical
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ASIN: 0815629591 |
Customer Reviews:
Solid Primary Material on New Netherlands.......2005-06-21
This is a wonderful set of correspondence, clearly translated with useful notes (including notes on the translation). Indispensible for those with a serious interest in New Netherlands.
I would very highly recommend this as educational source material for students learning how to use primary material.
Books:
- Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman (Library of America)
- Mexifornia : A State of a Becoming
- Mississippi Sissy
- Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870-1879: The Story of the Captivity and Life of a Texan Among the Indians
- On the Hunt: How to Wake Up Washington and Win the War on Terror
- Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience
- Options, Futures and Other Derivatives (6th Edition)
- Penny from Heaven (Newbery Honor Book)
- Physik (Septimus Heap, Book 3)
- Please Do Not Open this Book! (Bright & Early Playtime Books)
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