Silly me: I started reading this book thinking that I was actually going to learn more details about the Mayflower. After chapter one ended, and it became apparent that I was going to get no further information about the object the book was titled after, I became disheartened and discouraged with the book. Eventually I came to terms with the fact that I was indeed reading a different book than I thought I was, and after that my opinion improved.

I learned all kinds of great things about King Phillip's War, as well as some details about Puritan settlement in New England of which I was previously unaware. I imagine that if I was familiar with modern day New England geography the book would have been even more fun to read, as the author takes the time to correlate historical names of rivers, towns, and other places with their modern counterpart. It was well written and interesting, and to this I give 4 stars. (To whomever decided on the title of the book, however, one star should suffice.) ( )

Philbrick writes an amazing piece about early American Colonialism. Each chapter ends with a cliff hanger that urges you onward. The characters are real and you feel for their cause. Philbrick tells a story that is far too often misunderstood because of national myth and stories. Here is the real story of the Mayflower and it is an excellent and exciting one. I highly recommend it. ( )

The complete story of what happened after the Mayflower landed in Plymouth Harbor in 1620 most assuredly won't be told in U.S. classrooms as we approach Thanksgiving Day. Philbrick reveals how the tenuous relationship between the Pilgrims and the natives unraveled over a 50-year-span culminating in the bloody King Philip's War. Although it only lasted 14 months, the losses on both sides were staggering.

I thought the author gave a balanced portrayal of humanity on both sides; however, something was lost in his efforts. This gripping history was told with a surprising mildness and lack of passion. The first part of the book with its story of survival and perseverance was fascinating. The second 2/3 with the endless names of Indian tribes and various skirmishes, not so much. I did learn a great deal about this period of history, but I prefer my history to be more personalized.

"With the outbreak of the Civil War...the public need for a restorative myth of national origins became even more ardent, and in 1863 Abraham Lincoln established the holiday of Thanksgiving -- a cathartic celebration of nationhood that would have baffled and probably appalled the godly Pilgrims." (Pg. 354) ( )

This book was awesome. If you have any curiosity about the Pilgrims and what went on after the first Thanksgiving, this is the book for you. I wasn't at all familiar with King Philip's War until I read this book. ( )

This is not just the story of the founding of Plymouth Colony, but the tale of how fifty-five years of peace between the English and the Indians of New England deteriorated into a bloodbath when the descendants of the first generation came to see the members of the other culture as unnecessary. They were no longer neighbors but competitors, no longer partners working to survive together, but obstacles to survival. The result was King Philip’s War. “In terms of population killed, King Philip’s War was more than twice as bloody as the American Civil War and at least seven times more lethal than the American Revolution.” -- page xv. ( )

The Mayflower and the Pilgrims’ New World is a very well written book that I enjoyed immensely. Much of the information contained in this book I did not know and I found it exciting as well as informative. Being a born New Englander with immigrant as well as Native American blood, I am a little ashamed that I did not already know the true story of the Pilgrims and their adventures. This book is not a book that paints a flowery picture of colonial life but a harsh and sometime tragic tale. I am now bitten by the bug to know even more of the rich history of both the New World settlers and the original native peoples. Thank you Nathaniel for opening my eyes to the history in my own back yard… ( )

This is an really interesting book that tells the story of the Mayflower. I consider myself a good student of history, but I learned a lot of information from this book. ( )

Interesting if you want to know more about this era, but probably not enticing to the casual reader. ( )

Mayflower focuses on the period between the Pilgrims' arrival in Massachusetts and the end of King Philip's War. It's a fascinating period, and if all you've ever heard is the Thanksgiving Story propagated every November, you're in for a big surprise. I knew, of course, that without the help of Squanto and Massasoit the Pilgrims would never have survived the first year in America. However, I had no idea of Squanto's duplicity; apparently he "played his own game" and tried to pit Massasoit and the Pilgrims against each other to his own advantage. Funny how they manage to leave that out of the Thanksgiving tradition! (As a side note, in The Pilgrims' Party by Sadyebeth & Anson Lowitz, the Thanksgiving tale I read as a child, Squanto is portrayed as a boy. Interesting, given that Squanto was actually in his late 30s or early 40s. Considering that The Pilgrims' Party is labeled "a really truly story" on the cover, it is stunningly ignorant of the actual facts of the Pilgrim story.)

Nathaniel Philbrick uses as many primary sources and early secondary sources as he could find. The book is definitely well-researched, and an extremely in-depth look at a people who in truth are nothing like the history we've since invented for them. Both Natives and Pilgrims have been twisted over the years to suit the needs of America. I really appreciated his attempts to tell the Native story, since that is one we almost never hear.

Minor nit-picking specific to the audio CD (which has since been returned to All Ears): Each CD "chapter" was 10+ minutes long, and there were only four or five per disc. It was a bit of a pain if I wanted to take a CD out and put it in a different CD player, because there wasn't an easy "stopping" point. I wish they'd broken up the chapters a little more. ( )

I had always wondered how we moved so quickly from the first Thanksgiving feast to the French and Indian wars. This book fills in this gap beautifully. It shows how the diseases spread by the first European fishermen devastated the eastern seaboard and thereby cleared away land that the pilgrims claimed. The book goes on to detail how later rising population pressures led to increased conflict and eventually war. I found the book to be easy to follow and quite entertaining. ( )

Sometimes a difficult, boring read, but I was motivated because I am a descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins Alden. I enjoyed the gathering of information. ( )

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick is not your father's Thanksgiving. Mr. Philbrick's ambitions are large and the scope of his book is wide. He begins with the Pilgrim's roots, back in England, follows their story to America and through the lives of their children and grandchildren some 50 years after the founding of the Plymouth colony. His ambition is to tell the story of how this group went from a close, symbiotic relationship with the Native Americans to an all out war that devastated both populations.

Fans of Mr. Philbrick's earlier book In the Heart of the Sea will find much to enjoy in the first section of Mayflower. We learn the inner workings of 17th century trans-Atlantic travel in detail. We all know this part of the story, how hard the journey to America was and how the pilgrims and the sailors formed the Mayflower Compact to guide their settlement. Mr. Philbrick tells this part of the story well, but the book really picks up speed once the Mayflower gets to America and leaves the Pilgrims there.

Mayflower has been called a revisionist history, which seems to now mean that it puts in what other history texts have left out. The details Mr. Philbrick includes are fascinating: Miles Standish was so short he was known as Captain Shrimp, behind his back. He actually had to cut the tips off of his rapier so it would not drag on the ground when he wore it on his belt. The first words an Indian spoke to the Pilgrims were "Welcome Englishmen!" Squanto, who spoke fluent English after living in Europe for many years, became the main interpreter for the local sachem, tribal leader, out of an ambition for power. The Pilgrims did have turkey at the first Thanksgiving, but they'd already had it back in England since once they were imported to Europe domestic turkeys became widely popular there.

But Mr. Philbrick's real interest is in the Plymouth colony's second generation. King Philip's War and the events that led up to it, illustrate the deteriorating relationship between the colonists and the native population that would haverepercussions throughout the history of the United States.

Much of this part of Mayflower is focused on Benjamin Church, grandson of Richard Warren one of the passengers on the Mayflower. Benjamin Church became one of the central leaders of the English in the war against the Natives of New England which was started by King Phililp, the sachem or leader of the Pokanoket Indians who had been the saviours of the Pilgrims under the previous sachem Massasoit. For almost 50 years the English and the Native Americans has existed side by side in a difficult but peaceful relationship. However, the children of the first settlers did not think they needed the help of the Natives to survive and badly wanted to expand into their lands. A series of injustices, culminating in the execution of three innocent Indians who'd been charged with murder, led to the outbreak of war. Native Americans from throughout New England joined King Philip in his attacks on English settlements. Benjamin Church argued that the English should maintain as many friendly relationship with Indian tribes as they could. He argued that few Indians wanted to join with King Philip and that most could be convinced to fight alongside the English.

During the first half of King Philip's war, few English would listen to Church; even peaceful Indians with longstanding ties to English settlers were attacked and driven from their homes if not killed or captured and sold into slavery. King Philip was not a good leader and, though he won a few significant battles, he was soon on the run from the English and from Benjamin Church. Eventually, the English agreed to let friendly Indians fight alongside them, which made it possible for them to finally defeat and kill King Philip. The English had won the war, but lost any hope of maintaining a peaceful coexistence with the Native Americans who'd lost some 60% of their population to battle or to slavery in the West Indies.

What struck me in reading this section of Mayflower was that the divisions among the Native American population is what made it possible for the English to succeed. Massasoit and Squanto both were engaged in a power struggle with other tribes that led them to see the English as potential allies. This was a strong motivating factor in the help they gave the early Pilgrims. These tribal conflicts continued into the time of King Philip and Benjamin Church. Had King Philip been able to unite the tribes in an alliance against the English, the Native Americans may have been able to drive them from New England or at least keep them confined to the settlements they already had. American history would have been dramatically different in any case.

That the English were cruel to the Indians during wartime, that they used their justice system against them, came as no surprise to me. The time period is just prior to the Enlightenment age, Europe was a violent place, there was little that the Pilgrims did to the Indians that was not done to every defeated population in Europe at the time. What did surprise me was that they sold captured Native Americans into slavery. This included women and young children and was done for the expressed purpose of removing the Indian population from New England.

It is compelling to speculate about what might had been. If a few incidents had gone a different way, if this person had risen to leadership instead of that person, who knows what might have happened. What is clear from reading Mayflower is that the path of Manifest Destiny that led to the removal of the great majority of Native American people from their homelands was not the only option available when the English first arrived in what became the United States.

Mayflower is a compelling read that you may find hard to put down and it raises many interesting points and questions that will leave you thinking. I'm giving Mayflower by Natianiel Philbrik five out of five stars. ( )

I've never been to interested in reading up on the Plymouth Colony mostly because the true history is all to often shrouded in myth. Stories of Plymouth Rock, the first Thanksgiving, religious freedom, and the start of American overshadow the truth. The latter is especially true since even before I lived near Jamestown for several years I was aware that it and several other Virginia settlements preceded Plymouth (not to mention St. Augustine, FL and the California missions). The other thing that bugs me about popular history of the colonial era - for both Plymouth and Jamestown - is that the story seems to cover the 1620's and then jump 150 years ahead to the Revolution. If we're lucky they might pick up the story in the 1690's with the Salem Witch Trials. What happened to the colony during the time when the second and third generations of English settlers (and those born here) were making their mark on New England?

Despite it's title, Mayflower (2006) by Nathaniel Philbrick tells the story of the Plymouth colony from its origins among the English Separatists living in Leiden, Holland to King Phillip's War in the 1670's. While not comprehensive, this is a thorough history of the Plymouth Colony's first half-century. Along the way the truths of some of the myths are put in context, but the real story is much more interesting. Plymouth survived through complex and changing alliances among the Piligrims and various native tribes in New England. Old histories generally characterize the Indians as savages, newer histories shift the blame to imperialist Europeans, but Mayflower refreshingly characterizes both English and Indian as humans, flawed but making the best of things in uneasy times. Also interesting is the often overlooked story of the Plymouth Pilgrims relations with other colonies including the rowdy merrymakers of Merrymount, the larger and more prosperous Massachusetts Bay Colony, and even the Dutch in New Netherland.

The real heart of the story comes in the chapters about King Phillip's War. If there's a major fault in this book it is that Philbrick really seems to have wanted to write just about the war and all the chapters preceding it, while good, feel almost like a long preamble. The war is a complex conflict with alliances forming that pit Indian versus Indian, English hostilities against non-combatant tribes inadvertently forcing those tribes into the war, and noble deeds and atrocities performed by each side. The war had a considerable cost both in lives (the death rate considerable higher than later American wars) and psychologically as the English and Indians never were able to live together again in New England. Central to the story of King Phillip's War is Benjamin Church, whom Philbrick characterizes as the first frontiersman - someone who fought Indians, yes, but respected them and adopted their practices along the way. In Church, Philbrick sees the creation of an American identity for the next two centuries.

Mayflower is a good popular history and an easy read. I learned a lot and recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the time period. ( )

Very good read on something that really happened in which we only learned a portion about in grade school. Kudo's to those who came before us and kept their cool! It gives me encouragement. ( )

History was almost never this interesting in school. ( )

Used as a springboard for a project on the Pilgrims. Took a year before I got bored and moved on. Very easy read and footnotes conducive to research. ( )

First off, let me say that I hate the title of this book. The Mayflower returns to England on page 101 and is never heard from again. Plymouth would have been a much more appropriate name for the book. That said, I don’t have much more to quibble with over Philbrick’s fascinating history of the Pilgrims and early-Anglo New England history.

In Philbrick’s history, neither the Europeans nor the natives were painted as all good or all bad. Philbrick traces the origins of this early American settlement from the departure of the Pilgrims from Leiden, Holland, in 1620; through their initial exploration and settlement in Massachusetts; their treaties, early disputes, and agreements with the natives (in particular with Wampanoag leader Massasoit); their acquisition of land from the natives and their increasingly contentious relationships with them; and finally into their war with Massasoit’s son, King Philip, and the rest of the area natives. Throughout, Philbrick highlights the points at which poor judgment, by Europeans and natives alike, worsens relationships between the parties and leads to an avoidable, catastrophic war.

Near the end of his book, Philbrick points out that most Americans think of American history as the first Thanksgiving and the American Revolution, with nothing in the 150 years between. I think that’s a fair statement, and I appreciated learning about some of the “between” history.

I found this to be boring. The Pilgrim story has so much potential, and this one is very well-researched and detailed, but it's very slow moving. I think I learned something, but I didn't actually pay much attention to a lot of the detail of the various battles. Also, I think the book is misnamed. Only the very beginning relates to the Mayflower voyage and the first few years of the colony. The rest focuses on the war with the native Americans. ( )

It is rare for me not to finish a book, but as hard as I tried I just couldn't drag myself to finish this book. I really think it was the most boring book I have read since I finished school more than 30 years ago. Too bad, as I was anxious to read the fascinating story of my ancestors. But he managed to make this a dull, complicated, drawn out historical report. ( )

Philbrick’s account of the voyage of the Mayflower is awe-inspiring. This is, by far, the most scholarly research into the famous Thanksgiving tale. Combining diary accounts, business records, and archaeological findings, he weaves a tale that is worthy of modern cinema. And best of all, he achieves this high mark without the use of cliches or judgment. A necessary read for any lover of American history. ( )

I just can get enough of revisionist history! Again and again English explorers/colonist make the same mistake of discounting indigenous cultures as worthless. Politics, bah! ( )

4265 Mayflower A Story of Courage, Community, and War, by Nathaniel Philbrick (read 26 Jan 2007) I read this because I was so taken by his prior book:
3400 In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick (read 1 Feb 2001) (National Book Award nonfiction prize for 2000).
But this is a far different book, and after interestingly telling of the voyage of the Mayflower in 1620, spends all its time telling of the Pilgrims and their dealings with the Indians, culminating in King Philip's War in 1675-1676. The author says that 35 million people are descended from the people who came over on the Mayflower--which seems unbelievable, but is probably true. This book was not as compelling as I hoped it'd be, but is a pretty thorough account of Pilgrim-Indian relations from 1620 to 1685. ( )

http://howtolivethegoodlife.wordpress... ( )

A fascinating read full of more than a few wonderful insights. Though the "war" portion was less engaging from my personal standpoint it was well worth the read. ( )