Title: Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

Author: Nathaniel Philbrick

Publisher: Penguin 2006

Genre: U.S. History Nonfiction

Pages: 463

Rating:  5 / 5 stars

Reading Challenges: Mount TBR; Dewey -- 970s; My Years -- 2006

How I Got It: I own it!

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.

It felt so good to get back to reading history books.  And this one is beautifully written!  Philbrick creates an engaging narrative that hits all sides of the history of the Pilgrim settlement.  My favorite side of the story was all the politics.  We get Pilgrims and Strangers, we get Pilgrims and various native groups, we get native groups and other native groups, we get Pilgrims and Puritans.  All sides with their own agendas, needs, and wants.  Although it took me a while to read this one, but it was worth it.  Philbrick's narrative is so dense that it took me a couple of times to rereading paragraphs to digest all the information.  But I didn't mind because it was well-constructed.  A definite read for a comprehensive history of the Pilgrims and their history and impact on American history.