Thursday, November 02, 2006

Mayflower

I just finished Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick. Here is a link to the book information. It is a retelling of the history of the settlement of Plymouth Plantation minus the hero worship that we all  learned in school. It makes the story even more amazing to see how easily the colony could have failed without the happy accident  of the Pilgrims meeting up with Chief Massasoit and his strategic decision to help the Pilgrims to provide himself with allies in his weakened state.

The story is a tragedy however, with the start of King Phillips' war 50 years later, when according to Philbrick, the descendants of the the first colonists and the Pequots forgot that they needed each other to prosper.

Alot of this material was also covered in less detail in 1491, by Charles C. Mann. These are both great books.