The Wordy Shipmates,   ISBN:9781594484001

Customer Rating: 

Sarah Vowell jumps around much too much. She is consistent in her lack of focus on the subject. One moment you are reading about the Puritans (the subject) and in the next moment your are in another century reading about the Vietnam War. No you did not accidentally flip a couple pages. That is the way she writes. It seems everything reminds of her of everything else she has studied or read. Her active mind sees a multitude of connections that must be mentioned there and then. The Puritans have to be patient. They can just wait for the next sentence or paragraph.
If you like to be constantly taken off on tangent you may well be delighted by this book.

Customer Rating: 

A fun read. Sarah Vowell uses her wit and sensitivity in following the Puritans from the shores of England to what is now Boston. Along the way she examines their relgious beliefs and provides some incite into how we've progressed as a nation. She chronicles her protagonist, John Winthrop, a real person, to give us a glimpse of life in America beginning in the early 1630's. Occasionally, she flashes forward to show how the Puritan ideas may be affecting present day America. Though I didn't buy into everything she wrote, I did enjoy her writing style and found the book hard to put down.

Customer Rating: 

Fasten your seatbelt. This is not an ordinary history or revisionist history book. In a book about America's Puritans, would you expect references to Charlie's Angels, the Brady Bunch, John Kennedy, John Kerry, George Bush, and Martin Luther King? Yet Sarah Vowell weaves together a tale to show us what the minds of the Puritans were like.

She's not making up all of this. She supports her statements with letters and other Puritan-era writings. With references to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, marginal notes from the Geneva Bible, and the Magna Carta, she demonstrates how Puritans like Roger Williams and Gov. Winthrop formed their belief in right to trial by one's peers and that even the king is not above the law.

The book will probably give you a new improved perspective on the Puritans. Vowell's writings on Roger Williams' experiences with the Algonquians will likewise present surprising insights on Puritan/Indian interactions.

The thoughtful reader may even deduce that the Puritans, whom most of us have always regarded as so "puritanical," were really little different from mainstream America's "political correctness" advocates, who want us all to "just get along," "think right," or "get with the program."

Customer Rating: 

I so loved this book. I heard the author promoting it on a couple talk shows and, because of my family history dating back as Rhode Island "refugees Baptists" running from Massachusetts in the 1670's, I ordered the book. I learned so much and Sarah is wonderful story-teller. She cares about all these people and treats them ever so fairly. I sense she feels a deep sadness that John Winthrop's "City on a Hill" came short of what he had invisioned when he embarked on his voyage with the Bible and Magna Carta in hand.

Customer Rating: 

I am not a history buff, but I love any well written story. Sarah Vowell brings life and affection to our nation's ancestors in a way school never did. Totally recommend this book, especially if you hate history.