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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1929 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-24
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. 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)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Few periods in American history are as clouded in mythology and romantic fantasy as the Pilgrim settlement of New England. The Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, the first Thanksgiving, Miles Standish, John Alden and Priscilla ("Speak for yourself, John") Mullins -- this is the stuff of legend, and we have thrilled to it for generations. Among many other things, it is what Nathaniel Philbrick calls "a restorative myth of national origins," one that encourages us in the conviction that we are a nation uniquely blessed by God and that we have reached a level of righteousness unattained by any other country.

It is a comforting mythology, but it has little basis in fact. The voyage of the Mayflower was a painful and fatal (one crew member died) transatlantic passage by people who knew nothing about the sea and had "almost no relevant experience when it came to carving a settlement out of the American wilderness." 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." As for Priscilla Mullins, John Alden and Miles Standish, that tale is nothing more than a product of the imagination of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

These cherished myths, in other words, bear approximately as much resemblance to reality as does, say, the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. In Mayflower, his study of the Pilgrim settlement, Philbrick dispatches them in a few paragraphs. It takes considerably longer, and requires vastly more detail, for him to get closer to the truth about relations between the Pilgrims and the Indians. Popular mythology tends to focus on Massasoit, the chief of the Pokanokets who allied his tribe with the English settlers, and Squanto, the English-speaking Indian who formed a close, mutually rewarding friendship with William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Plantation for three decades. Some of what that mythology tells us is indeed true, but as Philbrick is at pains to demonstrate, the full truth is vastly more complicated.

Philbrick, who lives on Nantucket Island and has written often about the sea and those who sail it -- he won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2000 for In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex -- specializes in popular history, a genre often sneered at by academic historians but treasured by readers, who welcome its emphasis on narrative and lucid prose. He is not as graceful a stylist as the genre's most celebrated living practitioner, David McCullough, but his work is entirely accessible and gives every evidence of being sound scholarship. He appears to bring no bias to his work except a desire to get as close to the truth as primary and secondary sources allow, in refreshing contrast to the many academic historians who -- consciously or not -- have permitted political and cultural bias to color their interpretations of the past.

Because Philbrick is in search of the more factually complex and morally ambiguous truth behind essentially self-serving popular mythology, it is important to emphasize that he is not out to denigrate that mythology or those who embrace it. He celebrates the courage, resourcefulness and determination of many of the settlers, most notably Bradford and the remarkable warrior Benjamin Church; he acknowledges and describes in detail the many ways in which Pilgrims and Indians cooperated, in some cases to their mutual advantage; he pays particular tribute to Mary Rowlandson, the settler who was kidnapped by Indians and endured much hardship and privation but ultimately helped broker peace between Indians and Puritans.

He knows, though, that the story of the Pilgrims can't be reduced to doughty Englishmen and women in modest homespun and smiling Indians proffering peace pipes. Like the settlement of the West, the settlement of New England was hard, bloody and violent. If Indians made horrendous attacks on settlers -- many of those whom they killed were women and children -- the Pilgrims more than responded in kind. Many of the Pilgrims were pious folk, Puritans who crossed the ocean in hopes of worshiping as they wished -- they "believed it was necessary to venture back to the absolute beginning of Christianity, before the church had been corrupted by centuries of laxity and abuse, to locate divine truth" -- but like the settlers of Israel three centuries later, they were ready to fight when necessary, and they fought with zeal.

Encouraged by Longfellow and other mythologizers, we have tended to think of the Pilgrims as earnest, uncomplicated and rather innocent, motivated solely by religious faith and goodhearted in their dealings with New England's native population. There is a measure of truth to this, in that some settlers wanted to treat the Indians fairly and tried hard to live peacefully beside them, but they were also fiercely determined to gain a foothold in this new land and did not hesitate to act violently in order to gain one. The famous Mayflower Compact that they wrote and signed during the Atlantic crossing did contain a few of the seeds from which the United States and its democratic system eventually sprang, but the settlers were not especially democratic themselves. They disliked and suppressed dissent, enslaved Indians and shipped them off to brutal conditions in the West Indies and clung with such stubborn rigidity to their belief that they alone understood God's will that they were incapable of comprehending the Indians' very different culture.

The early years of Plymouth Plantation were exceedingly difficult but comparatively peaceful so far as relations with the many Indian tribes were concerned. Gradually, though, as English settlers moved ever deeper into New England and as Indians grasped the full extent of the threat to their established way of life, the settlers grew more belligerent, and the Indians grew more hostile. Indian raids on isolated settlements became more frequent and more brutal. The burning of Springfield in 1675, in what is now known as Massachusetts (after a tribe that was especially unfriendly to the Puritans), seems to have been the turning point. One prominent settler said it proved that all Indians were "the children of the devil, full of all subtlety and malice," a sentiment that many others came to share.

The ultimate result was an oddly forgotten chapter in American history: King Philip's War. Taking its name after the son of Massasoit who became chief of the Pokanokets, this dreadful little war started not long after the raid on Springfield and lasted for about two years, with gruesome consequences for everyone involved. Plymouth Colony lost eight percent of its male population -- by comparison, "during the forty-five months of World War II, the United States lost just under 1 percent of its adult male population" -- but these losses "appear almost inconsequential when compared to those of the Indians." The total Indian population before the war was about 20,000; by war's end, "at least 2,000 had been killed in battle or died of their injuries; 3,000 had died of sickness and starvation, 1,000 had been shipped out of the country as slaves, while an estimated 2,000 eventually fled to either the Iroquois to the west or the Abenakis to the north. Overall, the Native American population of southern New England had sustained a loss of somewhere between 60 and 80 percent."

It was a costly and entirely unnecessary war, brought about by Philip's vanity, Puritan stubbornness and a pervasive atmosphere of mistrust and misunderstanding. After the war finally ended, it quickly vanished from the public consciousness except in the places where it was fought: "Thanksgiving and its reassuring image of Indian-English cooperation became the predominant myth of the Pilgrims. . . . In the American popular imagination, the nation's history began with the Pilgrims and then leapfrogged more than 150 years to Lexington and Concord and the Revolution."

All of which is very much in the American grain. We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. But if Mayflower achieves the wide readership it deserves, perhaps a few Americans will be moved to reconsider all that.

Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Mayflower rethinks the events and players that gave rise to a national mythology about Pilgrims living harmoniously with their Indian neighbors. Instead, Philbrick tells a story of ethnic cleansing, bloody wars, environmental ruin, and the deterioration of English-Indian relations. While he introduces familiar elements, Philbrick also recasts well-known characters like Miles Standish ("Captain Shrimp"), William Bradford, and Benjamin Church. Most critics agree that he provides a well-researched, unbiased revisionist history (though we should note that for years many people have been reading about the environmental devastation of New England, the bloody Indian-English wars, and the less-than-pious Pilgrims). If not as gripping as the National Book Award?winning In the Heart of the Sea (2000), particularly the second half, Mayflower nonetheless provides a harrowing account of survival and, despite its grim themes, a celebration of courage.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

large print book for my father
I can't actually review the book itself, since it was a gift, and I haven't read it. I ordered it specifically for my dad who is having difficulty reading while awaiting cataract surgery. The book did arrive quickly and safely.

Bad title, great book, does he really not use Native Oral history
Okay, I moved to Plymouth 3 years ago and well I got tired of not knowing what really happened. Of course, trying to find out has been very difficult. I was so happy to see this book, maybe a bit naive, but I thought it would clear things up for me. And it did! I felt it gave a balanced approach and a much more believable account of what really happened. The romantic Thanksgiving story is so worn out. Human nature, being what it is, also does not account for the story that all the White people wanted was Native annihilation. The documentation of the research Philbrick did was impressive and comforting too. In an effort to fact check, I went to Plimoth Plantation and talked with the Native Americans about their feelings about the book. I was told that Philbrick only accepted written accounts for his research. Is that really true? Without having a written language, the only way the Native American's could pass along their information was through oral history. If Philbrick did not accept this history than it makes this story very one-sided. While I agree, oral history would make his job more difficult, he would have a responsibility to let us, the readers, know that he did not accept oral history. He does mention this very briefly and vaguely on page 360-361, which in my opinion is buried. When I went to the gift shop to look at the books they recommended, suspicioulsy missing was this very book. Just know if you purchase this book, some vital Native information may be missing. Check out the blogs at Plimoth Plantation and ask the Native American Representatives yourself.
The title of this book is wrong and yes, misleading. I didn't realize the book would cover 80 years of history. While initially disappointed, in the end I very much appreciated it. This book explains clearly what is confusing to so many. How did they even survive? How did this historically anti-social group become friendly with the Natives. The details revealed in the book not only explain how these things happen but make a great deal of sense. Philbrick suggests that Massassoit may have believed the Pilgrims has the ability to unleash the plague at-will. As so many of his tribe had recently been desimated by the plague it makes sense that he would have treaded a bit lighly around the Pilgrims. It also makes sense to me that with reduced warriors and with other Native enemies at his door-step that Massassoit would partner with the Pilgrims. That they made a mutually supportive arrangement is not a surprise. But what happens next is more telling about American's and our history. In a story repeated throughout every generation and every people's is the saga about not learning from the previous generation. The Pilgrims spawn forgot about religion and embraced property. Greed, not a new tale, is repeated on a grand scale. With the loss of great leadership and an inability to band together, the Natives have difficulty fighting back. Philbrick also talks about the Natives own attraction to English ways, baubles, and conveniences. This rings true to me and while Natives might not like it, allows for some of the future confusion. The author seems balanced to me. I especially appreciated Philbrick's note on how, when white people were at war around the world, their documented atrocities were more brutal than the "savages" in the new world. He also talks about the relationships that some of the Natives made with the Pilgrims that caused them to support the Pilgrims instead of the Natives. It is very believable that conflicts were not strickly race related. The coverage of all of these years, gave me a much more thorough appreciation for what happened here in Plymouth.
As mentioned by other readers, the account in the story about Church is very unbelievable and reads more like a comic book hero. At the Plantation, they told me a lot of Philbrick's information about Church was written by Church's son and not the man himself. I do not know if this is true or not, but it would account for Church's superhero stories. In fact, as I was reading, I very much enjoyed those very stories. I couldn't believe Hollywood hadn't rolled out many movies, as so many of Church's accounts could produce multiple blockbuster action films that I would LOVE to see. Maybe not true, but definetly entertaining! The story about being pinned down and outnumbered by Natives, Church survives by sending his men, two at a time, by canoe out to a waiting shalloop. He then forgets his belongings, so makes a return trip, retrieves this things and escapes back to the boat. Indiana Jones anyone? Did I mention he had no ammunition? Or that no one was hurt? This was supposedly under constant fire from the Natives. It is hard to believe.
Yes, lots of characters sometimes hard to follow. Yes, very little info on the trip over. Great info on why they came in the first place. However, even with more questions, I do love this book. It has led me to read other first account books and continue my search for what really happened. If you read this book and take it as 100% factual, I think it is a 3. If you read this book for great insight, mostly accurate, and it leads you to other research, I give it a 5. In fact, I am going to read it again!

Great, Great Book!
Being from the Boston area, one cannot escape the legend that is the Mayflower. Yet, Mr. Philbrick's narrative brings the reader close-up to the struggles these brave people faced, not only when they crossed the North Atlantic, but the problems they faced when they came ashore.
As an American History Teacher, this is probably the best book on the subject I have read. A terrific read!