1 of 1 members found this review helpful.
“The Wordy Shipmates is my first Sarah Vowell book. To be perfectly honest, I have never heard of her before. Therefore, I was in for a surprise. I assumed I was going to get a straight, scholarship-filled book about the Massachusetts Bay Puritans (as opposed to the more famous Plymouth ones). Instead, I found myself in the midst of an amusing armchair history with an interest in linking the past with the present.
Vowell takes us on an amusing, yet literate, journey through the first decade or so of the Colony's first years, focusing on politics, ego and struggle. John Winthrop, the first governor of the Colony, is the central historical figure of the book. His vision of a magnificent Puritan "city upon a hill" is the central metaphor of the book, and one which Ronald Reagan exploited while he was president of the United States. Winthrop's chief adversaries are Roger Williams, the banished theologian who founded the Rhode Island Colony, Anne Hutchinson, a housewife turned unauthorized Puritan minister (also banished), and the Pequot Indians (mostly destroyed).
While amusing and informative, The Wordy Shipmates fails when it attempts to link the present with the past. Vowell succeeds at first: her initial focus on religion and strict mores strikes a powerful chord between our post-September 11th world and Puritan fanaticism. But Vowell only makes the connection briefly and fails to link the two eras passed that, save the aforementioned Reagan. This weakness becomes quite obvious in the final pages of the book. Vowell suddenly calls upon the ghost of JFK, who also used the "city upon the hill" metaphor, and then suddenly ends the book. It is almost as if Vowell was tired of trying to link her beloved Pilgrims with the present and decided to hand in her manuscript and grab some chai.
This weakness, however, did not limit my enjoyment of the book. I found the story of the Colony and its characters fascinating, and Vowell successfully brought their world to life in our own.”
missed wrote this review Friday, December 12 2008.
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