November 2022 Book, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War

Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library and via zoom.

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War is a historic nonfiction narrative Nathaniel Philbrick. The narrative outlines the reasons for the Mayflower’s historic voyage, before giving a realistic account of the Pilgrims in the New World during their first fifty-five years. Perhaps most important in Philbrick’s assessment is the tenuous relationship between the Pilgrims and their Native American neighbors; with this cooperative relationship in mind, Philbrick investigates several other, “superficial” assessments of the Pilgrims, including the view that the Pilgrims were “good” while their Native American neighbors were “bad”. Ultimately, Philbrick shows the reader that this particular episode in American history was not black and white; the history of beginnings never is.

Mayflower highlights how the Pilgrims and their neighbors, the Pokanokets, came to establish a relationship based on mutual need. The Pilgrims needed to survive in a harsh new environment. They also needed allies if they were to develop their settlement. At the same time, the Pokanokets, led by Massasoit, had lost their place as the most powerful people in the region, largely due to death and disease. The Pilgrims could be the key to restoring their status. Though initially distrustful of each other, the two sides came together to ensure their survival, political and otherwise.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

March 2024 Book, American Dialogue: The Founders and Us

Image
  Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library.    In American Dialogue, Ellis divides four chapters into two parts each: Then and Now.  Each chapter focuses on what he identifies as four enduring issues that are more salient and challenging in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Ellis establishes the historical foundation for each subject and then examines the complexity of each in the context of a divisive political climate complicated by domestic and international obstacles.  Acknowledging that a true conversation with the founders is obviously impossible, he attempts to connect their concerns regarding these controversial topics with those of modern America. Hence, his use of the term dialogue in his title.  The four areas he identifies are race, equality, law, and foreign policy. In each case, Ellis chooses one member of the founding generation as the central figure with whom to engage...
Read more
Image
 Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library. It's 1932, a time of hardship, adversity, and despair. Especially at the Lincoln Indian Training School, formerly a military outpost called Fort Sibley. It's a place where Indian children who have been taken from their families are sent so they can be educated in the ways of the white world. But it's really a place meant to obliterate every trace of their Indianness, by force if necessary. Odie O'Banion and his older brother Albert, orphans, are the only two white boys in the school. The opening pages describe their time in the school's quiet room, what used to be the military's solitary confinement cell. Odie tells the story from the viewpoint of his younger self: "The night was moonless, the tiny cell as black as pitch, our bed a thin matting of straw laid on the dirt floor, the door a great rectangle of rusted iron with a slot at the bottom for the de...
Read more

July 2024 book, The Color of Water

Image
  Talk About books meets every third Wednesday of the month at Guilford Free Library at 6:30. If the book of the month interests you, contact the library to reserve a copy and join in the discussion. In this memoir, James McBride tells the story of growing up as a son of his white, Jewish mother Ruth. Ruth was born in Poland and raised in Suffolk, Va, the daughter of an itinerant rabbi and a loving, disabled mother who spoke no English. At 17, Ruth fled the South, landed in Harlem, married a black man in 1941, founded a church, was twice widowed and raised 12 children in New York City. Despite hardship, poverty, and suffering, Ruth sent all 12 of her children to college. An astounding story of triumph over poverty and cruelty, through love, courage and determination. It leaves one to acknowledge that "truth can be stranger than fiction."
Read more