The Wordy Shipmates
by Sarah Vowell
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sarah VowellEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-10-07
ISBN: 1594489998
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9781594489990
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of The Wordy Shipmates
Book Review: "Puritanically Correct" (PC)
Summary: 4 Stars
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."
Summary of The Wordy Shipmates
The Wordy Shipmates is New York Times-bestselling author Sarah Vowell's exploration of the Puritans and their journey to America to become the people of John Winthrop's "city upon a hill"-a shining example, a "city that cannot be hid."To this day, America views itself as a Puritan nation, but Vowell investigates what that means- and what it should mean. What was this great political enterprise all about? Who were these people who are considered the philosophical, spiritual, and moral ancestors of our nation? What Vowell discovers is something far different from what their uptight shoe-buckles-and- corn reputation might suggest. The people she finds are highly literate, deeply principled, and surprisingly feisty. Their story is filled with pamphlet feuds, witty courtroom dramas, and bloody vengeance. Along the way she asks:
* Was Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop a communitarian, a Christlike Christian, or conformity's tyrannical enforcer? Answer: Yes!
* Was Rhode Island's architect, Roger Williams, America's founding freak or the father of the First Amendment? Same difference.
* What does it take to get that jezebel Anne Hutchinson to shut up? A hatchet.
* What was the Puritans' pet name for the Pope? The Great Whore of Babylon.
Sarah Vowell's special brand of armchair history makes the bizarre and esoteric fascinatingly relevant and fun. She takes us from the modern-day reenactment of an Indian massacre to the Mohegan Sun casino, from old-timey Puritan poetry, where "righteousness" is rhymed with "wilderness," to a Mayflower-themed waterslide. Throughout, The Wordy Shipmates is rich in historical fact, humorous insight, and social commentary by one of America's most celebrated voices. Thou shalt enjoy it.
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