Mayflower

Starred review from February 6, 2006
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.

Starred review from April 1, 2006
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. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ "1/06.]" -Michael Rogers, Library Journal"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2006
Departing from his customary nautical stories, including the phenomenally popular " In the Heart of the Sea" (2000), Philbrick makes landfall with the saga of the Pilgrims. By necessity, all modern writing about the founding colonists relies on William Bradford's " Of Plymouth Plantation" , interpreting it through modern historical sensibilities that incorporate native perspectives on the newcomers from across the ocean. Long gone is the once inculcated version of friendly Indians helping starving English religious refugees through hard times. The scholarly thesis now has the Pilgrims arriving amid coastal Indian societies that had been decimated by a pandemic. The Pilgrims appeared in 1620 as a potential ally to the weakened Pokanokets and their sachem Massasoit against neighboring enemies: the Massachusetts and the Narragansetts. Philbrick essentially recounts this reigning interpretation with sensitivity to landscape description, narrative suspense, and understanding of motivations: piety, wrath, gratitude, duplicity--a panorama of human character and historical portent is on display in Philbrick's skillful rendering. Chronologically tracking the fortunes of the alliance struck by Massasoit with Bradford, Philbrick carries events through the second generation, in whose collective hands the alliance exploded into King Philip's War of 1675-76. A sterling synthesis of sources, Philbrick's epic seems poised to become a critical and commercial hit. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)