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Books : Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War |
List Price: $16.00Amazon.com's Price: $10.40 You Save: $5.60 (35%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.22
EAN: 9780143111979
ISBN: 0143111973
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Publication Date: April 24, 2007
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Sales Rank: 10587
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Nathaniel Philbrick became an internationally renowned author with his National Book Award– winning In the Heart of the Sea, hailed as "spellbinding" by Time magazine. In Mayflower, Philbrick casts his spell once again, giving us a fresh and extraordinarily vivid account of our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. From the Mayflower’s arduous Atlantic crossing to the eruption of King Philip’s War between colonists and natives decades later, Philbrick reveals in this electrifying history of the Pilgrims a fifty-five-year epic, at once tragic and heroic, that still resonates with us today.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This book was quite interesting in terms of historical facts. I personally found it a bit dry.
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Starvation concentrates the mind, and drives men to extremes. Nathaniel Philbrick has demonstrated this historical fact aptly in two recent works, the superb "In the Heart of the Sea" and now with "Mayflower", a disciplined and engaging re-working of the legend of the first pilgrims. Philbrick seems interested in characters whose hunger transcends the corporeal, however. His portraits of the both the celebrated and more obscure scions of the Bradfords, Standishes, Churches and others all depict personalities who share an innate drive, an appetite for both worldly and divine discovery and conquest the propels them through direst misery and into the formidable portal of a wild new world.
Philbrick lingers over the original patchwork motivations of the pilgrims, a mixture of economic and religious grievances that drove strange but determined alliances. In so doing he reveals main historical characters with a clarity of purpose and vision that would serve them well during their travails in the new world. He moves through the well-worn tale of the woeful journey and the first winter with dispatch, seeming eager to detail the far less examined story of the Indian alliances that motivated the benificent first feast and set the stage for the burgeoning and threatening European population that followed.
With a historian's expertise and aplomb Philbrick narrates the relationships among Massasoit, Squanto, Bradford and Standish, but takes things much further, ... Read More
Rating:  -
As Nathaniel Philbrick has done in his other books, he tells a thorough and thoroughly enjoyable history in his book Mayflower. This is the story of the pilgrims, the whole story, from voyage through absorption by the Massachusetts Bay Colony after decades of carving a home for themselves in the new American wilderness.
I had always wanted to know more of the pilgrim story after the initial landing and first winter survival. This book not only details the voyage of these English religious refugees as well as their landing, but also how they struggled to hew a home amidst Indians in a new and often unforgiving environment. The book also details how a relative situation of coexistence with the native Indians deteriorated into conflict and annihilation as a result of King Phillip's War.
We see the Pilgrims landing and making their first forays along the coast in those tentative days after making landfall near Plymouth Rock (not at it, as popular history suggests), as well as the struggle to build a community and elbow some living room among existing and often warring native people. Philbrick tells the story of their building of community and government and of gradual expansion as more settlers are brought over to establish farms and satellite communities in the following years. This well told portrait of the very early existence of colonists will fill the gap for the average reader who usually skips from Jamestown and Plymouth right to the making of the Declaration ... Read More
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To one who enjoys historical people and places, particularly the adventures of Early Europeans in America, Mr. Philbrick's book, Mayflower is as delicious as ice cream and chocolate. This account of the pilgrims' voyage to the east coast of the New World is incredibly rich in detail and day-by-day reports of their landing and exploration, beginning with the Puritans who had gathered in Holland working toward departure. The lives, ilnesses and death aboard the Mayflower before their arrival in the New World and the appalling harships there, cause the reader to once more wonder at the bravery of these 17th Century pilgrims who dared the unknown. Of particular interest to this reader are the intricate accounts of motives that lay behind misunderstandings and cultural conflicts between Europeans and indigenous peoples.
Their subsequent struggles creating the Plymouth Colony, the successes and failures at scratching basic necessities, food and shelter, from the bare and often barren land that was to be their home. This book also shines a light on the courage of our forefathers and mothers carving a place for themselves in an often hostile environment. Mr. Philbrick's carful presenttion of these individual, men, woman, and children, faced with hostile indigenous peoples, epidemic plagues, and multiple wars has perhaps never been presented so clearly.
For the authors's consummate scholarship (e.g., 50 pages of notes and 28 pages of bibliography) and his spare, elegant ... Read More
Rating: -
It sounds a lot like current events. A group of refugees, fleeing from their homeland in a leaking boat, arrive in America. They are initially welcomed by the local population (Native Americans in this case), overcome various adversities, and end up in conflict with the original residents as they compete for available resources. People complaining about immigrants should read some of their own history.
I bought this book to read about some of my ancestors (William Bradford, Richard Warren, John Howland, and possibly others) who were on the Mayflower. The book provides an interesting and detailed account, from their original problems in Europe to the end of King Philip's War when they killed or enslaved the Native Americans whom they displaced.
I was already familiar with the general details, but the author provides a well written account of events.
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