The Wordy Shipmates
by Sarah Vowell
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Book Reviews of The Wordy Shipmates
Book Review: Sarah Vowell didn't let the Purtians get a word in edgewise
Summary: 1 Stars
If you want to learn about the Puritans - why they came to America, what their voyage was like, what their new life in America was like - DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. You'll never figure it out by the end of the book!
Sarah Vowell rambled on and on with her own "wordy" political agenda and never let the Puritans get a word in edgewise. This book reminded me of being in a terrible professor's class where I was a captive audience to listen to the professor's ego-centered opinion, while not learning a thing about the subject of the class which was why I enrolled in the class anyway.
The Seattle press stated she is a loyal patriot. I never found one thing she thought positively of our great country. As angry as she is with what her Native American forefathers went thru when the white man stole their land, she hates this country, not loves it.
The same Seattle press stated she is a Christian. That too is an over-statement. She bashes Catholics and Protestants alike. If she had ever spent time reading her bible, she would have discovered Christianity is about spreading the gospel in a loving fashion and would never condone the Crusade "method" of the Middle Ages or what she said the Purtians were aiming for.
I'm quite frankly sick of authors like Sarah pushing their agendas down our throats under the guise of an entirely different topic. This is not how history should be taught to our kids!
Don't waste your money helping to support this woman and her anti-American and anti-Christian agenda.
Sarah - since you so hate everything this country has done to you and your forefathers, why don't you leave instead of making a living off of bashing people like the nation's forefathers who had the gumption to come to America in the first place - despite all the uncertainities and harsh environment.
Get off your band wagon and really tell us what the Purtians were about as your book advertises.
I only gave this a one star rating as I can't go any lower.
Book Review: A Fascinating Book about a Subject I Never Found Interesting Before
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is about Puritans in New England from approximately 1630 to 1651, with historical trips to the future and the past to bolster points and provide insight.
The book is wonderfully detailed and full of diary entries and other quotes about and by John Winthrop, Roger Williams, and John Cotton, all Puritan heavyweights. There's also a brief bit about Anne Hutchinson and other players in the Indian-New England-England crucible that became the United States of America.
Vowell makes her points cleanly and clearly, although I personally would have appreciated a less flippant style. I guess, that however, is her trademark, and I must say that she has piqued my interest, especially in Roger Williams, with this book. The time period she writes of here doesn't usually interest me, but I'm interested now.
This book is described as "part memoir, part meditation, and part road-trip" by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a quote on the back cover. The memoir part doesn't particularly interest me because she interjects personal details and some one-liners that fell flat with me. I kept getting the vision of a stand-up comic waiting for the audience to laugh after a punch line. I didn't laugh. I found that it distracted me from her points about Puritans and New England of the 1630s and 1640s. I know I'm the exception to the rule and these personal facts and "jokes" will endear her to most audiences.
However, some of what seemed to be digressions, about Kennedy and Lincoln, Reagan and Gore, while initially startling, made sense as I continued to read. And her details of the Pequot War, her visit to Rhode Island, and excerpts from the Royal Charter of Rhode Island, the sermon "A Model of Christian Charity" by John Winthrop, and "A Key into the Language of America" by Roger Williams are used effectively to make her points and to edify and educate.
I had never heard of Sarah Vowell before reading The Wordy Shipmates. A very good book. An author whose other books I will search out.
Book Review: A Sharp, Witty Look at The Founding Fathers
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Having grown up in New England with ancestry both from the Mayflower and native American, I was really interested in Sarah Vowell's c
coverage of the puritans who settled the Boston area. Who were these people?
One of the interesting things she pointed out is that most of us get our entire concept of the pilgrims from the sitcoms we watched as children. In retrospect - I agree. We also place a tremendous amount of importance upon Plymouth Colony (because of Thanksgiving) when the Boston colony was actually much more influential upon history.
Lucky for us, the shipmates "wordiness" refers to the facts that they were a highly literate bunch who wrote all the time. A little investigation tells us a lot about them. From their written diary entries, letters, and sermons, we can get a good sense of how they thought. It's also important to place them into the context of what was happening in England at the time.
Vowell does a great job of displaying just how the beliefs of these Puritans shaped the US,up to and including the politics of today. It is important to note that these people were Calvinists, anti-democracy, intolerant to any beliefs but their own. While this sounds un-American on the surface, just blow the fine dust off current events to see these values still in action.
She posits that some countries are despotic and don't pretend they are not, while America frequently acts in despotic ways - but pretends that it holds the moral standard for the rest of the world. In a similar way the Pilgrims believed that the saved were already chosen, but they should go around and act like they were saved anyway - just in case.
This is a very interesting and witty read. Vowell's writing is clear, sharp, and extremely well researched.
Book Review: Not as engaging as previous works...
Summary: 4 Stars
I think that Sarah Vowell's writing is creative, witting and fascinating. Up until now, I have enjoyed everything written by Sarah Vowell and always look forward to her new books. But I wasn't quite as enthralled with The Wordy Shipmates. Maybe it's me, but I just couldn't get myself as stirred up about the Puritans as Vowell.
Vowell claims that "Americans have learned our history from exaggerated popular art for as long as anyone can remember." She attempts to set the record straight "about those Puritans who fall between the cracks of 1620 Plymouth and 1692 Salem, the ones who settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony and then Rhode Island." She places a special emphasis on the "words written or spoken" by Puritan leaders including John Winthrop, John Cotton, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. John Winthrop's sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity" plays a major role and appears again and again. According to Vowell, this sermon is "one of the formative documents outlining the idea of America" because of the "'city upon a hill' sound bite."
Vowell is clearly smitten with the Pilgrims, their words, their ideas and their history. Unfortunately, I did not find them that engaging. She usually makes comic parallels between the history she is discussing and the present day. She still does this in spots--sometimes it's more irony than belly laughs. While visiting the Mohegan Sun Casino operated by the Mohegan tribe, Vowell muses that 17th Century sachem "Uncas would undoubtedly get a kick out of his tribe presiding over such an impressive edifice built for the sole purpose of taking white people's wampum." Or that "an America fervently devoted to the quaint goals of working together and getting along" does actually exist. "It's called Canada."
One other thing I disliked was that Vowell does not divide The Wordy Shipmates into chapters. By the end, I was glad that I stuck with this book and I still think that Vowell is an amazing talent. But I was expecting a little more.
Book Review: the wordy author
Summary: 3 Stars
I have a major crush on Sarah Vowell. She's cute, she's smart, she's funny, she's quirky - and she's a history nerd to boot. I've read every one of her books, and loved each one of them.
Until now. It sounds like a very promising topic - Puritans, Pilgrims, and their effect on us (still) today. As always, there's lots of great stuff, I learned some interesting things, she made me think (and laugh) - but there was just something missing this time.
My guess is she bit off more than she could chew this go around, resulting in lots of insights but not the same ability to tie things together I've seen in her other books (i.e., lots of real meandering). That also seems to have meant that the prose style would never have the chance to shine that it normally does. Here's a case in point:
"In fact, Williams was calling it a "national sin" for the colony to claim the right to Indain lands based on the Charter granted them by the king of England. John Cotton later claimed that Williams was agitating in Salem that in order for the colonists to repent of the sin, it was "a national duty to renounce the patent," which Cotton fears would have "subverted the fundamental state and government of the country." Cotton also reported among William's arguments was a repudiation of England's justification for colonization, that the natives were not using the land because they were not cultivating it properly, not raising cattle. According to Cotton, Williams pointed out that the Indians were using the land - not for farming but for hunting. The Indians, Williams said, "burnt up all the underwoods in the country, once or twice a year." This stewardship, he maintained, was not unlike that of English nobles who "possessed great parks, and the king, great forests in England only for their game, and no man might lawfully invade their property."
Zzzzz ...