Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

 "The blood-stained history of the 17th-century settling of the Northeast has long been relegated to a fairy tale about Thanksgiving and a rock (everything you learned about the Pilgrims in grade school is turkey feathers!). National Book Award winner Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex ) now gives us a story of both heartbreaking misery and driving determination as he relates the Pilgrims' historic journey from Europe and their hardscrabble work to establish the Plymouth Colony. They faced the threat of starvation, illness, and the savage winter (half ultimately died) and, 50 years later, bloody wars against the Indians. Philbrick's Pilgrims are Taliban-like fanatics whose faith also is their politics. Far from the promised land of plenty, New England proved a dangerous, decimated, death-ridden coast ravaged by disease and civil war that claimed as much as 90 percent of the local population, and its soil was so overfarmed that it was as lifeless as stone. Familiar names get new faces: mercenary Miles Standish is a New World Rambo, quick to steal, kill, and behead, and native interpreter Squanto is a deceitful manipulator with his own political agenda. Fast-forward five decades to an overcrowded cluster of colonies pushing the Indians, who saved the Pilgrim forbears from certain death, to the point where the now well-armed natives have little choice but to push back hard in battles generating more carnage than D-day. Mayflower is a jaw-dropping epic of heroes and villains, bravery and bigotry, folly and forgiveness. Philbrick delivers a masterly told story that will appeal to lay readers and history buffs alike. Clearly one of the year's best books; highly recommended. [LJ 1/06.]--Michael Rogers,Library Journal [Page 108]." Check Catalog