The Wordy Shipmates

Learned quite a few things I had not realized about the Massachussets Bay Colony - and of course, Sarah Vowell always tells the story in a funny and interesting way. Between her story telling and their prolific letter writing (hence the title!), I feel as though I know John Winthrop and Roger Williams personally and certainly understand the history much better than I ever did before.I listened to the audiobook version since I've always enjoyed listening to Vowell on NPR. Could have done without some of the guest readings though - they were a little awkwardly done.

such an interesting book. I hope Ms. Vowell (nice literary name, eh?!? :) ) does more

Cheery and readable introduction to the Massachusetts Bay colony's early years, intent on a revisionist take on the puritan stereotype. Funnier than you'd imagine the subject to be. Vowell does have a tendency to digress into contemporary anecdotes and contrasts a bit beyond what's required.

When I studied early American history in school in the mid 20th century it was presented basically from the white English male perspective. Sarah Vowell?s presentation of that history of the Puritans settling Massachusetts is from her American Indian female perspective, which bias she happily acknowledges. Using many direct quotes from historical documents she weaves the story of the Puritan experiences in America with some glimpses of the history of England at that time, which includes the fall of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, and the reinstatement of the monarchy with Charles II. John Winthrop?s diaries were primary sources and quoted frequently; writing of other Puritans were also quoted and the details of those years were thoroughly expounded including the banishments of Roger Williams and Ann Hutchinson and the problems with the Indians. She also connects this history to many of the politicians in more modern times, showing how they used this ?story? for their agendas. If your memory of this period of American revolves around the Thanksgiving pageant at school I recommend this book to abtain a different perspective. This was our car book on our trip last week to Vallejo and Sunday we took a lovely Sunday afternoon drive into the mountains so we could finish the book. It took longer than the 7 hours because frequently we had to stop the disks to discuss what she was saying. This book offered much ?food for thought? and would make a great selection for a book group who is able to discuss opposing viewpoints without rancor. This book meets my requirements for a memorable read: it made me think and to examine my own biases. I will be reading more about this period in our history to get a more balanced perspective.About the recording: What I liked best about this recording were the musical interludes between sections (written especially by the performer for this recording) and the use of other voices to read the direct quotations. The latter not only highlighted the quotations but gave some relief from the narrator. I had two problems with Sarah Vowell as the narrator. She has a harsh, rather strident, voice that jarred me every time we started the disk and took getting used to. A bigger problem was that she obviously had several ?axes to grind? in this history and her voice emphasized even more than her actual words the places where she just had no use for certain characters or events. I have the same problem with her that I have with listening to Glen Beck?s books (on the opposite end of the political spectrum, I assume). His strident and demeaning tone of voice often lessens the impact of what he is trying to convey because I get annoyed rather than convinced. I think I would have enjoyed the Vowell?s book more had I read it instead of listening?but then I would have missed the discussions with my husband

Brief Description: Sarah Vowell uses her irreverence and considerable intelligence to explore the world and influence of ?the Wordy Shipmates? (aka the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony), some of the wordiest and most influential settlers of the United States. With a particular emphasis on Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop (who coined the famous and oft-used ?city upon a hill? metaphor), Rhode Island?s founder Roger Williams (whose personality confounded me over and over again) and Anne Hutchinson (a woman just couldn?t keep her mouth shut when she should have), Vowell explores the influence and legacy of the Puritans on the United States.My Thoughts: Although I realize that I want my history given to me by the likes of Sarah Vowell (irreverent and not afraid to go off to follow interesting tangents), I did not enjoy this book as much as I did Assassination Vacation. It just figures that the Puritans could put a damper on even Vowell?s snarky smart-assedness. I can?t quite figure out if it was the subject matter or Vowell just wasn?t in the groove for this one, but I felt like I was listening to it forever. Part of it was that Vowell played it more straight than usual and there were fewer pop culture references and personal stories to liven things up. Still, I managed to learn a lot and gain a better understanding of U.S. history. I guess I was just expecting more laughs. Harumph.

Since I'm acknowledged in this book (and even make a brief cameo appearance in the text) I'm ethically barred from officially reviewing it, but I will say that if you enjoy Vowell's work and don't mind a quirky look at early New England history, this is very much worth reading.

I'll say this - it was a quick read. Which might not be your first expectation of a book about Puritans. I learned some things, and I laughed out loud a few times. But overall, the writing bothered me because it was repetitive (do you really need to say that Anne Hutchinson arrived with her "whopping brood of fifteen children" and then two paragraphs later say, "And hers is one large family. Anne and Will Hutchinson have fifteen children."? That didn't-I-just-read-that-feeling will pull me out of a book faster than anything else. Also, saying "this here [noun]" more than once in a book should be a punishable offense.Overall, it was a big "eh" for me, but it was occasionally entertaining.

The Wordy Shipmates. Sarah Vowell. New York: Penguin, 2008.Reviewed by Elwood MillerSarah Vowell gives us a history of the Puritans written in a style meant to appeal to mass popular culture while chastising Americans for their distorted notion of their nation as a ?Puritan nation,? because, unlike today?s Americans, ?Puritan lives were overwhelmingly, fanatically literary? (13). Specifically, The Wordy Shipmates covers the period between 1629 and 1640, focusing on John Winthrop, John Cotton, Roger Williams, and Anne Hutchinson as a means to explain the origin of concepts such as American exceptionalism and manifest destiny, freedom of religion, and equality for all along with major themes in political and civic discourse such as the ongoing debate over public and private which have haunted the country since that period. Many readers accustomed to more rigorous histories will find The Wordy Shipmates controversial; ultimately Sarah Vowell produces a good read but she commits a myriad of factual errors and fails to use a historical lens when approaching her subject. This leaves room for doubts concerning the rest of what she says, especially since nothing is cited. I feel she does not accomplish what she sets out to do due to the lack of structural clarity, lack of a strong thesis, or a well constructed argument. Sarah Vowell?s argument lacks the accessibility she brings to her text, which ultimately renders her book confusing. In The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell highlights the inconsistency she sees in our seeming obsession with being a ?Puritan nation? given the fact that the Puritan movement was a scholarly, academic movement while the current state of our nation?s knowledge of its own history is anything is not. Perry Miller, one of the few sources Vowell actually acknowledges in her book, wrote that ?Puritanism was a learned, scholarly movement that required knowledge and a respect for the cultural heritage? (15). Ms. Vowell goes on to contrast that Puritan mindset with the contemporary public?s knowledge of its own history, mostly learned from the mass media of the Boomer Generation, the Brady Bunch, Happy Days, Mr. Ed, or what Ms. Vowell refers to as the ?Boy, people used to be so stupid school of history? (20). Ms. Vowell?s point here is that this is not a recent sin, but one which has been with us since at least Henry Wadsworth Longfellow?s ?The Courtship of Miles Standish?, and ?The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,? both of which are full of historical inaccuracies. So part of Ms. Vowell?s project is correcting the historical mythology through her own mass media version of the story of the Puritans. The question then becomes, how accurate is Ms. Vowell?s interpretation?Ms. Vowell warns us to be careful of judging the Puritans, to realize they were born before the Age of Reason, and to therefore use a historical lens when pondering their thoughts and actions (22). If only Ms. Vowell would take her own advice. Ms. Vowell ponders how often politicians reference the ?City on a Hill? passage from John Winthrop?s ?A Model of Christian Charity? sermon, especially politicians such as Sandra Day O?Connor and John F. Kennedy who, as Ms. Vowell puts it, would cause Winthrop to roll over in his grave if he knew such people (a woman and a Catholic) held power. Ms. Vowell seems to have forgotten what she had reminded us of earlier, that times and attitudes do change. Ms. Vowell also decides from reading Roger William?s and William Wood?s thoughts on native life, that being a native woman in seventeenth century New England must have been harder than being either a white woman or a native man. Her opinion is based on the fact that native women did all of the agricultural labor and apparently were so accustomed to extraordinarily heavy labor that for them, childbirth was not difficult at all. As Carol Berkin explains in her book, First Generations: Women in Colonial America, this is an entirely white Eurocentric view which has been discounted by historians who have learned that they must handle cautiously what was written by Europeans about Native Americans, viewing them as artifacts of European?s adjustments to cultural diversity rather than as true guides to native cultures (57). The second motif of Sarah Vowell?s book is the concept of our nation as a chosen people, a beacon of righteousness as an example for the world. Ms. Vowell claims the most obvious and most used example is the ?City on a Hill? passage from Winthrop?s sermon, which Ms. Vowell tells us was not published until 1838, just in time for John L. Sullivan to declare that the United States had a right to all of Oregon due to America?s ?manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us . . .? In fact, as Ms. Vowell points out, Winthrop?s sermon created absolutely no stir in 1630 when he delivered it to the Puritans who were New England bound (35). The problem with Ms. Vowell?s rendering is that John L. Sullivan was not even born until 1858, and then went on to become known as the Boston Strong Boy and the first heavyweight boxing champion of the world. It was John L. O?Sullivan who coined the phrase ?Manifest Destiny? in the July/August issue of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. That glaring error aside, Ms. Vowell?s point is that we dig no deeper into Winthrop?s sermon than the City on a Hill passage. Winthrop?s call was for a communitarian ethos where everyone works together and gets along, where everyone is responsible for each other and where some must be rich, some poor. Not exactly what our founding fathers had in mind 146 years later when they declared that all men are created equal. It is also an ethos which has a darker side . . . especially the part about being responsible for each other when you consider everyone needed to live up to Puritan moral standards. Nor do we critically analyze our own hubristic project in the world. The Puritans? arrogant view as being God?s chosen people was tempered by the Puritan self-loathing sense of reckoning and the Calvinistic urge to watch over themselves and each other. As Ms. Vowell puts it, ?the United States is still a city on a hill; and it?s still shining--because we never turn off the lights in our torture prisons. That?s how we carry out the sleep deprivation? (72). There are moments like these in Sarah Vowell?s book which are truly brilliant. Another such seemingly brilliant moment is when Ms. Vowell discusses Anne Hutchinson?s project for moving Protestantism further towards a more personal relationship with God, not only linking the democratization of religion to political democratization but also linking the shedding of the need for authority (the idea one need not listen to a clergy to achieve salvation) to a dangerous disregard for expertise. This anti-intellectual impulse, persistent throughout American history at least since the Jacksonian era, leads us to elect leaders who are ?wisecracking good ol? boy[s] . . . instead of a serious thinker who knows some of the pompous, brainy stuff that might actually get fewer people laid off or killed? (215). I ask myself if these are really Ms. Vowell?s ideas. This passage sounds remarkably similar to one of Richard Hofstadler?s theses in his 1964 Pulitzer Prize winning book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (74). In the end, Sarah Vowell tells us that it is not too late to begin again by quoting John F. Kennedy?s speech to a Joint Convention of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Kennedy told us he was guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates and ?ask[s] for y[our] help and y[our] prayers, as I embark on this new and solemn journey? (248). This, Ms. Vowell reminds us, was a new beginning and Kennedy was not alone. If only she had stated this at the beginning of her book, or at least on page 24, where she tells us the most important reason she is writing what she does is because ?the country I live in is haunted by the Puritan?s vision of themselves as God?s chosen people.? Ms. Vowell seems to use her book as a series of long essays in which she develops her arguments and then arrives at her conclusion, a way of writing which tends to leave the reader somewhat baffled. Fortunately, Sarah Vowell is a good enough writer that she is able to string the unwary reader along. Ms. Vowell admits she is a fan of the Puritans and finds them fascinating. She has some excellent notions regarding our national fixation with the Puritans, our national self-image, and the reality of our current situation. I fear that is not enough to redeem The Wordy Shipmates. A major problem with Ms. Vowell?s book is its multitudinous factual errors and failure to use a historical lens. I am left wondering how many other errors occur in her book that I am not aware of. Additionally, while Ms. Vowell admittedly is tackling a complex subject (a historical overview of the Puritan?s Great Migration based on John Winthrop, John Cotton, Roger Williams, and Anne Hutchinson as well as a critical analysis of our nation?s relationship with the Puritan ethos) she fails to present a strong thesis up front, so she is therefore unable to develop an understandable argument and seems to come to a conclusion by way of writing her book. I would hand this book back to Ms. Vowell, asking her how this is an example of her intellectual vigor, and demand a re-write.

I saw Sarah Vowell on TV ( The Daily Show? Colbert? One of the two). I picked up the book expecting a humorous romp through Puritan times in Colonial America. That wasn't quite what I got from "The Wordy Shipmates". Instead I've found a somewhat rambling and occasionally pedestrian account of early America. What I did gain from the book, however, is that the Puritans are far more complex than we were led to believe as schoolchildren. Puritans were not bible-thumping anti-intellectual prigs. John Winthrop, for instance, could be an incredibly humane and charitable man or a closed-minded bigot. And in a sense, Vowell's book argues that America still reflects those competing values and inclinations. We are the country that brought the world the civil rights movement and Guantanamo Bay detentions. We have alternatively embodied liberty and segregation and slavery. There's a complexity that belies both the "country first" crowd and the revisionist critics of our past.In the end, this attempt to convey our moral ambiguity is what saves the book. "The Wordy Shipmates" makes up for its shortcomings and made me appreciate our early history much more than I have for years.

The history of early Boston - particularly the religion and historical works of Winthrop, Roger Williams, and Anne Hutchinson. Funny in spots but not as funny as others. She also shys away from the why should we care about this questions. I can almost see it but I fear many would miss it.

I am so impressed by Sarah Vowell's ability to explain our history and make it as interesting as it was. John Winthrop, probably a good husband, a scholar, a great speech writer with a wonderful vision of establishing a commonweal in which neighbors helped each other and cared for each other and allowed no one to freeze or go hungry and at the same time made sure neighbors payed close attention to the behavior of their neighbors and didn't allow them to stray from the teachings of the (one true) church. Winthrop believed the puritans could establish a city on the hill, and thought it just fine that they massacred Native Americans in order to do so. His nemesis/respected friend Roger Williams who would have been really frustrating to be married to, who didn't give an inch in his interpretation of what his religion meant yet who believed in, promoted and assured for the citizens of Rhode Island complete separation of church and state (so that the government wouldn't debase religion). And there was Anne Hutchinson who, pregnant with her 16th child at the age of 46 stood up to John Winthrop and risked banishment in order to promote her belief that individuals had a right to disagree with church officials publicly and often. (The puritan interpretation of the 5th commandment to honor your father and mother meant citizens and church members were required to honor, respect and obey their government and church officials). Vowell helps us see the honor due to our fore fathers and mothers as she shows their obstinacy and their ability to ignore the rights of others when they found it convenient. It was a a relief to read about politicians who actually believed in something as opposed to just saying whatever they think will get them elected.

This was a quick read. It didn't drag and I enjoyed the second half of the book much more than the first. Vowell zooms through the Puritan past at a lightning pace. She mixes Puritan history with some of her own personal stories. Humor is sprinkled throughout the book but sometimes it falls flat.

I think I may have enjoyed The Wordy Shipmates more if it was an audiobook. It seemed to flow as a one-way conversation between Sarah Vowell and myself. Although it's just as likely that the drone of her voice and the snarky, yet corny, comments riddled throughout would be more likely to cause me to zone out on occasion than keep me at rapt attention. So I'm torn. I want to like this book. I can't say it's a really bad book. It's not. It's just not a really great book.

P.S. I don't remember nor do I really care about Happy Days or The Brady Bunch. Vowell spent waaaaaaay too much time going off on tangents. This lack of focus was distracting.

I love Sarah Vowell's earlier work, but the most recent primary focus on American History, while interesting, is a bit harder to embrace with the same enthusiasm. The earlier humorous essays of Take The Cannoli and Partly Cloudy Patriot are gems that sparkle with wit and illuminate as they entertain. Assassination Vacation, and now The Wordy Shipmates are larger-form works that seem to lose their potency with the loss of structure and gain in length. The information presented, and Vowell's wry commentary thereon, are interesting and at times funny in that special Vowell way, but they're both just a bit hard to follow. Both books seem to follow a rambling path where one source or anecdote leads to another in a never-ending string of association. This rambling stroll seems to mirror the joyful path of learning itself, but when presented in book form aimed at laypersons, it helps to have not an aimless meandering path, but a journey clearly marked with map and signs.

Another funny yet illuminating history book by Sarah Vowell, this time focusing on the Puritans in New England after the pilgrims and before the Salem Witch Trials. I learned a lot, and she's a really entertaining author and reader. I really enjoy her deadpanning and her humor, and I'm glad I have Assassination Vacation on audio in the wings.

The Wordy Shipmates is a somewhat irreverant and humorous look at the Puritans. While I respected the author's research, utilizing the works of persons such as Winthrop, Williams, and Cotton, my enjoyment of the book was marred by the writer's obvious politically left and feminist interpretations of events when comparing things to more modern politics. The engaging manner in which the book was written could make this era come alive for many students who find history dull and boring. The addition of chapters would have made for easier reading.

I like Sarah Vowell's quirky wry look at history. I enjoyed it in Assassination Vacation and I enjoyed it again here. She spends a lot of her time on context and trying to relate what you're hearing about to other events and changes at the same time.

Anyone who appreciates Sarah Vowell's writing is in for a real treat. The Wordy Shipmates is an uncomplicated presentation of history with a heavy dose of stream of consciousness commentary. Vowell grew up in the church, Pentecostal to be exact, and has an amazing grasp of 17th-century American theology for a layperson. Don't be scare though--her presentation is straightforward and easily understood. I feel like I know a great deal more about the Puritans after reading The Wordy Shipmates. Vowell was inspired to write about the Puritans following September 11th. During those hardest of days, Vowell took comfort in Winthrop's words, "We must delight in each other...mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body."Vowell's writing is witty and thoughtful. I found myself struck by an innovative thought either of Sarah's or inspired by her throughout my reading. I enjoyed her discussion of Reagan's usurpation of Winthrop's "city on a hill" phrase (from the same speech quoted above). I think the following quote highlights the intellectual curiosity, wit, and sarcasm Vowell pours into her work. "And speaking of marriage, in colonial New England weddings were "a civil thing," civil unions one might say, performed by magistrates, not clergy. Because a wedding wasn't trumped up as the object in life that saves one's soul--that would be God--but rather more like what it actually is, a change in legal status, an errand at the DMV, with cake." [taken from ARC, may vary from final printing]The Wordy Shipmates was just released today (October 7, 2008), and I recommend you go and get it without delay.

I laughed only twice...I didn't realize that the book was only a study of Puritanism. I was hoping for more about the everyday life in 1630's Boston.
~Stephanie

Blame it on Nathaniel Hawthorne and that fantastic Jonathan Edwards sermon ?Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,? but I just can?t help loving the Puritans. That?s right. Loving them. I am fascinated by these people who were so convinced they were God?s chosen that they left their families and communities for what can only be described as a harrowing journey across the Atlantic to a new world of unknowns. Sure, they also believed this destiny entitled them to kill the natives, take the land, and impose their religious beliefs, but doesn?t that make them interesting?This was my first time reading Sarah Vowell, and it was pretty much love from page one. Focusing on John Cotton, John Winthrop (author of the famous exhortation to be ?as a city upon a hill?), and the social, political, and religious motivations of the people who founded America, Vowell brings to light the petty arguments, deeply felt convictions, complex relationships, and community values that, whether we acknowledge it or not, continue to form the basis of our society today. And yes, Vowell has her own political agenda here, occasionally pointing out that the things that make the Puritans sound crazy are not so different from the things that motivate members of other exremist religious groups to attack and criticize America today.The post-9/11 context gives The Wordy Shipmates added depth, and Vowell presents her research and her just-subtle-enough jabs with a snappy pace and a hefty portion of snark. But the book is really all about the story behind the story, the seldom told history of the people who came after the Mayflower, and the complexities of their inner lives and their relationships with each other. The blurb on the back of The Wordy Shipmates calls Vowell?s Puritans ?highly literatate, deeply principled, and surprisingly feisty,? and that sums it up nicely. The story is so interesting, in fact, that I didn?t even notice it is written as one long piece?no chapter divisions here?with just the occasional paragraph break.

Sarah Vowell's audio performances never fail to entertain, whether on This American Life or in the audio version of one of her own books, such as Assassination Vacation. I can't say as much for her work in its written form. While Vowell packs her books with interesting information, they tend to lack the voice that Vowell might fill in with, well, her actual voice. Snark does abound in The Wordy Shipmates, a book that recounts the first years of the Massachussetts Bay Colony; however, archival records dominate the text. Quotations, often in block form, take up at least half of every page, leaving me feel as if I might as well have gone directly to the primary source and read the papers of Roger Williams and John Winthrop for myself. The book has made me more informed about the goings-on of 17th-century America. Vowell acts as a knowledgeable tour guide who has the salacious details. She's been on enough museum tours to know how it should be done. But, on page, at least, this tour seems, well, wordy. I'm not sure what Vowell wants to impart unto her readers. The book could be a primer on Puritan New England, but it doesn't ask to be taken seriously as an academic text. And, while Vowell keeps her tour funny, she spends too much time in facts to classify The Wordy Shipmates as humor. Meanwhile, she indicates several parallels between Puritan New England and modern America, but does not explore them enough to make a cohesive thesis. Altogether, The Wordy Shipmates offers pleasant-enough chitchat about an area of American history that often gets glossed-over, but I wish I'd sprung for the audiobook.

Loves this irreverent take on the Pilgrims.

Ok, I'm a bleedin' heart polyamorous atheist myself - but the ideology in this book was so far left, so biased, that it made me have to work hard to find nuggets of actual history here. But wait, most of that history was so overwritten with lame attempts at humor, faddish pop culture references and elliptical paragraphs and omission of chapter breaks that I had to work hard just to figure out who was on which team. I *think* Vowell actually convinced me of a few things she didn't mean to even say.... There's a quotation on the back by the LA Times Book Review: Sarah Vowell is a Madonna of Americana." What does that actually mean? I say it means the same thing most of the pages of this book do: nothing."

After 8 years in which a determined faction of the Republican Party sought to tear down the Constitutional barriers between church and state, SarahVowell's The Wordy Shipmates seems more like a newspaper than the well-researched and gripping historical account that it is. One recent presidential aspirant, MikeHuckabee , who said, "what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it?s in God?s standards rather than trying to change God?s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family," would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Massachusetts Puritans, like John Winthrop and John Cotton. But as Vowell's title suggests, and as she herself makes clear, the religious settlers of New England differed from modern American politicians in one respect: They read voraciously and wrote continuously. Knowledge and learning were held in high esteem in the 1600s, in stark contrast to 21st century leaders who make a fetish - and a virtue - of ignorance. The Wordy Shipmates were not the Plymouth Puritans of turkey-and-maize fame; they were the settlers of the Massachusetts Bay colony. One of their early priories was the creation of an institution of higher learning, known today as Harvard College. Vowell, a regular contributor to NPR's This American Life, illustrates her point with copious selections from the letters and diaries of Winthrop, Cotton, Roger Williams and their contemporaries. In the process, she delivers a highly readable account of the portions of our early history either ignored or glossed over in the classroom: the massacre of Native American women and children by Puritan soldiers, the stifling of dissenting views by the religious-civil authorities, the internal disputes that rocked the New England establishment. I remember learning in elementary school that Roger Williams had been banished from Massachusetts, which led him to found his own colony on Rhode Island. What I was not taught in school was that Williams - a conservative Christian whose religious views would rivalHuckabee's - was banished because he believed in the strict separation of church and state. Vowell recounts the disputes between Williams and Winthrop in light, readable prose that makes history seem alive and very, very contemporary.

Sarah Vowell brings her unique perspective to my Puritan ancestors. Neither a debunking nor a hagiography, this book will give you plenty to think about and a few laughs as well. Recommended.

Very good. A good choice for my first audiobook, since Vowell is known for her radio work. Not sure I would have stuck with it if I had to read it, though.

Sarah Vowell?s The Wordy Shipmates takes on the subject of early New England history with an insightful and sometimes amusing bent that makes it an easygoing and fun read. It?s an accessible and cool book, a Gen Xer?s take on how the puritan culture of seventeenth century Massachusetts and its neighbors still continues to inform our American mindset. Shipmates takes us through the story of John Winthrop, a puritan minister who traveled to New England in 1630 aboard the ship Arbella with a group of true believers and a dream of creating a ?city upon a hill? in the New World, a vision of America that we as a nation still espouse to this day. Along with Winthrop, Vowell includes several other prominent figures from the time: Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his outspoken arguments for the freedom of religion and the separation of church and state, Anne Hutchinson, a puritan woman gifted with a sharp legal mind and an even sharper tongue, as well as the Pequot and Narragansett Indians, natives who were forced to make room for the expanding European settlements.With wit and an armchair style that makes the subject matter engaging and interesting, Vowell draws relevant parallels between the Massachusetts Bay Colony?s seal with its picture of a Native American holding a banner that reads ?Come Over and Help Us? and our current national policy of ?helping? foreign, sovereign nations with military intervention. The writing is smart, its thesis timely without being preachy. Both entertaining and informative, The Wordy Shipmates is an interesting little primer on the origins of American political philosophy.

Loves this irreverent take on the Pilgrims.

While I believe that the book is backed by thorough research, it has a flippant and entertaining style which hides much of the information. The reader is not immersed in the time for much of the book due to the frequent jumps in time meant to show influence of that time's thinking upon the present. It was these threads through time that felt like clever opinion rather than well researched connections. They were often interesting and thought provoking but irritating in that they interrupted the story of the time.

Another dose of historical non-fiction for a long car ride. Compared to Vowell's other books, this one is very focused and told via a close reading John Winthrop's journals. I was actually surprised to see how many US presidents have quoted Winthrop's "city on a hill" line (and I wonder how many realize the irony of their doing so). The story of the early Massachusetts Bay Colony and its Native American inhabitants bears very little resemblance to the "school-play" version of puritans and Thanksgiving. Vowell effectively shows how this "already learned" history can be a messy, complex, and still worthwhile subject.

Sarah Vowell'sr 'Take the Cannoli' is my favorite of hers. Her mix of pop culture and religion and history is great. She HAS to be one of the only people to wade through the primary sources of John Winthrop and friends. I'm not sure I'll remember all the specifics, AND I am grateful that she did. I love her comments and observations on our forebears, a modern, intelligent and clever commentary on religion and religious freedom (as it were) in the 1600's.