Mayflower
A Story of Courage, Community and War
Viking, April 2006
Nathaniel Philbrick became an internationally renowned author with his National Book Award-winning In the Heart of the Sea, hailed as “spellbinding” by Time magazine. In Mayflower, Philbrick casts his spell once again, giving us a fresh and extraordinarily vivid account of our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. From the Mayflower’s arduous Atlantic crossing to the eruption of King Philip’s War between colonists and natives decades later, Philbrick reveals in this electrifying history of the Pilgrims a fifty-five-year epic, at once tragic and heroic, that still resonates with us today.
“Impeccably researched and expertly rendered, Philbrick’s account brings the Plymouth Colony and its leaders, including William Bradford, Benjamin Church and the bellicose, dwarfish Miles Standish, vividly to life. More importantly, he brings into focus a gruesome period in early American history. For Philbrick, this is yet another award-worthy story of survival.”
—Publishers’ Weekly (starred review)
“A startling new version of the Mayflower story – a surprise-filled account of what are supposed to be some of the best-known events in this country’s past. [“Mayflower” is] as fine a conversation piece as it is a work of scholarship.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times