The Wordy Shipmates
by Sarah Vowell
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Book Reviews of The Wordy Shipmates
Book Review: Interesting, Insightful and Sometimes Humorous Book about Puritans
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
First of all, I have not read any Sarah Vowell before, although I would definitely like to read more after reading this book. I am familiar with her from NPR and other programs, so I had an idea what to expect. Overall, Vowell does not disappoint, and I learned a lot about some of the lesser-known Puritans of our country's past.
This non-fiction book focuses on the Puritans who left England under the leadership of John Winthrop to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony and what would become Boston. (These aren't your Thanksgiving/Plymouth Puritans.) Vowell's main "character" is John Winthrop, and most of what she discusses has a connection with him. She covers a lot of territory, from the departure from England to the first tough year to the colony's struggle with people on the fringe (such as Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams, Puritans with views too extreme to stay in the colony) to complicated relations with Native Americans (including a very disturbing massacre).
The book is chock full of information, but is not too wordy (ironically enough). Vowell exercises her sense of humor and sarcasm expertly, and it really kept the narrative interesting and engaging. I could hear her voice in my head as I read it. As other readers pointed out, Vowell does connect events and ideas in the book with modern times, but I did not find this approach overly anti-religious or anti-conservative. It is clear what side of the line Vowell falls on, but I don't think it tainted the book in any way, and I really found the connections and implications of our history very interesting. My one point of criticism, and this may have been corrected once the book was edited for final printing, was that there were no chapters or sections. The narrative was kind of chunked together, and although it flowed well, I think I would have liked to see things separated by chapters or sections, just to be able to organize what I was reading better in my mind. That's really a pretty minor criticism.
I was very impressed with this book and enjoyed it a lot. I have a feeling that some of Vowell's other books may be even better, and I can't wait to check them out.
Book Review: Not all Puritans were created alike
Summary: 5 Stars
Many readers will come to "The Wordy Shipmates" via the same route and reason I did: I enjoyed "Assassination Vacation." I expected the pilgrims would get the same work out as history of America's first three presidential assassinations--travelogue, history, connecting the dots along history's timeline to reveal America's growth as a nation and culture, and a dose of Vowell herself, a passionate, opinionated history geek with a penchant for irony. In "Shipmates," there is far less present day geographical travel and less of her quirky self in the narrative. What she mostly does is travel through the words of New England's founding Puritans to sort out the ideas that shaped things to come, how they did and did not play out, and to see how they reverberate today.
Vowell is right: when pilgrims come to mind, it's a big harvest feast with happy Indians. People tend to think they arrived all at the same time, and that the witch trials of Salem were on the heels of the disembarkation at Plymouth. In fact, the immigration began flowing with the Mayflower in 1620 and covered much of the 17th century which closed with the Salem trials. The Puritans were not all of one mind and belief, either. In fact, they struggled among themselves regarding the tenets of their faith, their relationship with Mother England, what New England should be and not be, and how to treat one another and the Indians. Vowell mostly focuses on the events of the 1630s, when Roger Williams was banished to the wilderness where he carved out Rhode Island, when the domineering Anne Hutchinson rattled male leaders, and when things went from "the Indians want us to help them and we'll do our best" to the Pequot War that batted clean-up on the devastation that European microbes had already wreaked, thus making way for the state of Connecticut.
I give Vowell a 5 for doing her homework, for casting out misconceptions and finding out just who the founders were, what they believed and what were their actual legacies. She is amazingly lucid given that her travels are largely intellectual among a pithy bunch. I give her a 4 for the fact that it is rendered in one long episodic essay--no chapters, no index. This does not have the bouncing-off-the-walls headiness of "Vacation," but she gets at our Americaness in a meditative but urgent way that is effective, so I'll stick with the full 5 points.
Book Review: I liked it, but this book has flaws
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
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.
Book Review: Dancing in History
Summary: 5 Stars
Sarah Vowell is my type of gal: writer extraordinaire, political guru, and complete and total history nerd. Coming off the success of the off-beat and incredibly likeable Assassination Vacation, Vowell brings to us the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is her delightful new book, "The Wordy Shipmates".
People familiar with Vowell's work will be charmed with the musings of her new tome. Taking on colonial America and only she can see, Vowell paints a portrait of rugged stoicism, harshness, and reflective political discourse. She introduces us to John Winthrop, a middle class businessman and Puritan lucky enough to sail to the new land on the Arbella (why no fondly mention of this ship in our history books?). Winthrop's contribution to Americana has not been forgotton, mostly in the form of Reagan's classic speech which he evoked "the shining city on a hill" as a symbol for America. Turns out, as Vowell muses, Reagan's shining city on the hill had lots of trash, homelessness (by choice!), and people dying of AIDS, unacknowledged by the conservatives in Washington.
In fact, that's what Vowell is best at in this book. She gives us palatable doses of American history (so as not to scare off those people who are fact-phobic) and then writes a chain of observations of that theme (much like the radio show she often narrates for, This American Life) that are sometimes witty, and sometimes touching. In reading the aforementioned "Christian Charity" sermon, penned by Winthrope, Vowell takes us on a brief but incredibly touching journey through post 9/11 New York City, proving that yes, despite differences, we Americans DO come together and DO watch out for each other. Even in NYC.
I guess I love Vowell's writing because it appeals to the inner-history geek in me; the one that loves to imagine what it was like hundreds of years ago, braving an angry ocean, ship sicknesses, and coming to a new land; filled with people from an entirely different culture, and trying to make a new life. Vowell's writing is a perfect balance of fact and op ed musings that make spending time with her books the most worthwhile.
Book Review: Not her best effort
Summary: 3 Stars
The coolest thing about the book is how Winthrop used the "City on the Hill" analogy in a sermon and how that analogy has been used throughout U.S. history to justify various stances on moral grounds. Reagan intentionally used Winthrop's allusions in many of his speeches. Kennedy, Vowell's idol, does the same. The problem with the book is that she points out a few good things about the Puritans, but the climax or what she writes most about is the failures. The main good things are that they were intellectual. They were readers. They founded universities. However, the climax of the book is the massacre of the Pequot Indians at Fort Mystic. Or was the climax the banishment of Anne Hutchinson? She was expelled from a religious community whose rules she did not like anyway. Hutchinson was a heretic. Vowell wrote a lot about these two incidents and about Willams. Vowell's message seemed to be inclusiveness. I guess Puritans did not believe the right things.
Another problem with the book is she is so predictably liberal. She hates Reagan and Bush. She loves Kennedy. She keeps writing that beliefs can get you killed, which is unfortunately is a belief I think. The massacre of the Pequots was terribly wrong. Both sides made mistakes and the conflict escalated out of control. I was not sure what lesson we should learn from this tragedy except that I wished it never happened. She compared this incident with Truman's decision about nuclear bomb. I think she thought his decision was terribly wrong. She didn't really explain. I am sure Truman thought his decision was terrible also, but I don't think he felt the Japanese and circumstances gave him much of a choice. I don't want to judge him. Many people were going to die no matter what decision he was going to make.
The book was dry in spots and her quirkiness, which usually spices up her prose with pop culture references in earlier books, only helped a little. I learned some, disagreed with her a lot, and wished she could have more fun writing books with a more coherent message. She did not seem like she was enjoying herself.