Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, & War

In this non-fiction title by Nathaniel Philbrick, which won the National Book Award in 2oo6, we return to those American icons, the Pilgrims. Philbrick's engaging prose puts the formation of the Plymouth colony and the Pilgrims' interactions and their relationship with the Native Americans under a historical microscope. (I am imagining an extra diminutive Miles Standish wriggling on a glass slide, but that's beside the point).

This is the only balanced book I've encountered on this subject. The Pilgrims and later, other English colonists, are all too human. Philbrick doesn't venerate the Pilgrims, nor does he vilify them. He treats the Native Americans in the same way and describes as best as possible the cooperation and conflicts that occurred. He doesn't entirely step away to allow the reader to draw his/her own conclusions, but draws us readers into the past to see events as they played out without making heroes or villains of anyone.

The conclusions drawn (at the end in the last chapter) point toward the possibility of living together in a tolerant, cooperative, mutually beneficial society. That this is possible - it was at one point and could be again. Perhaps that's what drew so many readers to the book last year and why it remains so popular at this time. We Americans (and most other people in the world too I believe) want to live in peace with our world neighbors even though our belief systems are different and our cultural values differ. Working together, we can build a world where we all can thrive.