The Wordy Shipmates [Hardcover]

I love Sarah Vowell's books. She is an absolute master at examining a historical subject, relating it to the world we live in, and inserting her personal foibles to it, all in a narrative that moves so smoothly and quickly that you're sometimes surprised that you've read the whole book at a sitting. That's what she attempts to do here, but she doesn't quite pull it off this time.

Don't misunderstand me; this isn't at all a bad book. In fact, it's fascinating. It is jam-packed with fascinating information about the Massachusetts Puritans and the religious, social, and historical context of their settlement. Vowell weaves comments about her family background, education, travels, and hopes and fears into the narrative, just as she usually does.

When Vowell's writing works best, it's driven by her quirkiness and her ability to veer off on what seems to be a tangent, then bring everything together in the end. She does that here, but just not as well as in her other books. Perhaps the subject just isn't as susceptible to the Vowell treatment as the subjects of her other books.

I actually enjoyed this book, and I recommend it highly. However, it's just not as good as her other books made me expect it to be. Well worth reading, though.

There's nothing like a Sarah Vowell book to provide a new slant on a historical period. In "The Wordy Shipmates," she tackles a rather odd era, and one for which most people have definite opinions: the settlement of Massachusetts by the Puritans. Vowell does not reveal that the Puritans were *not* the American version of the Taliban. Certainly, they were fanatical, even by the standards of their own time, and harsh and guilt-ridden to boot. Their endless arguments about the meaning of biblical verses and their extreme hatred and fear of "Papists" put them two steps away from the loony bin. Yet they possessed attitudes (and paranoias) that put them squarely at the root of what would become the American nation character. Having arrived on these shores, by the grace of God, they were ferociously jealous of their freedom from the intrigues and violent interference of the English court and church. Worried sick about takeover by their own government, they were careful to give at least the appearance of subservience to the powerful crown. Vowell's hero is John Winthrop, the first governor of the collection of rude shacks that became the city of Boston. Winthrop is an oxymoron -- a Puritan with a streak of practical morality -- who rules with a weird combination of Christian compassion and tyrannical ruthlessness. Over a fractious and easily offended populace, Winthrop bobs and weaves like a prize fighter, somehow managing to keep his society from fragmenting. Winthrop nearly meets his match with Roger Williams though. Williams, far from being the free-speech champion that we liberals thought him to be, is even more of a Puritan than the Puritans. He finds that his austere compatriots to be insufficiently willing to separate from the ungodly, raising the hackles of "moderates" like Winthrop, and eventually earning himself banishment from the community. Yet Vowell finds the silver lining in Williams, who, arguing for a wall to keep the government out of the *church*, set the stage for future debate that bore fruit over a century and a half later in the Bill of Rights.

"The Wordy Shipmates" is a fascinating read, peppered throughout with Vowell's entertaining and snarky similes and parallels. Her discussion of the way that most Americans (including herself) get their history from popular shows like "Happy Days" and "The Brady Bunch" is illuminating and a little scary. To counter this, Vowell provides plenty of primary material -- mostly from Winthrop's journals -- and provides explanations that give context and cut through the turgid 17th-century prose. Most aspects of tehstory move briskly,. Though her telling of the genocidal Pequot "War" drags a bit. She does do a great job of seeing how Winthrop's' "City on a Hill" image has been used and misused throughout history, especially by those who missed the point that at its base, the City was intended to describe a society whose members were bound to one another through Christian charity. For a closer look at a society which we tend to judge and dismiss, "The Wordy Shipmates" book is a gem.

Upon reading this book, I struggled for a few days on how many stars to give this. At times, I really liked Vowell's very personal-essay-like history of the Pilgrims at the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Vowell is very knowledgeable and, at times, is a very good and passionate writer. At times, however, I was also either bored by redundancy, waiting for a seemingly episodic collection of essays to "come together" and read like a book, or annoyed by Vowell's constant employment of sarcasm.

Alas, I chose to give this book 3 of 5 stars. I figure that the best way to explain is to go through a list of pros and cons.

PROS: _________________________________________

Vowell's book on the Pilgrims is obviously a very personal one, and her enthusiasm and passion for the subject shows very well. She recounts not only the tortuous adventure the Pilgrims took from Britian to America and their struggle to build a city, but also tours she has been on, journals she has pored through, and what the Pilgrims mean to her.

The Wordy Shipmates works best - works quite well - when it is read as a collection of themed essays, rather than a flowing book. Once I began to read it in this way, I was better able to admire Vowell's frequent and lengthy asides (where an essay on x quickly becomes an essay on y). Each essay explores some facet about the Pilgrims - their religiosity, their caring nature, their admiration of hard work - but each essay stands on its own more than connects with other essays.

CONS: ____________________________________________

As something of a collection of essays, Vowell can be (quite) redundant. When exploring the Pilgrims, she often goes back to the same points (every other essay seems to come back to how the "City on a HIll" metaphor led to US exceptionalism; true, but no more true the hundredth time than the first.) Many essays focus on the same topics over and over through slightly different "angles." Good for a 20 minute NPR piece, but not for a book.

For a book on such a meaty subject, I really found Vowell's frequent sarcasm and attempts at humor a little out of place and repetitive. I suppose that towards the end of the book, I felt the way I did after seeing Juno; the quips are interesting at first and annoying half way through.

FOR THOSE CONTEMPLATING THE AUDIOBOOK: I fully agree with another reviewer who advised that this book may be better read than listened to. While some might find Vowell's "Lisa Simpson with a lisp" voice endearing, I find that her akward delivery made the listening...well...akward. Nor did I like the fact that EVERY SINGLE quote in the book is read by a guest reader (which is fine when they are reading a passage, but tedious when they are reading one or two words).

I wholly reccomemnd this book for those wanting to read a decent collection of historical essays they don't want to have to think too deeply about.

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