The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell

Wishing our U.S. readers a Very Happy Thanksgiving!

Sarah Vowell is not your average historian, she’s quirky, funny and revels in irony. She hunts down the oddities in the past and presents them in glowing neon. Her previous bestseller, Assassination Vacation, was an irreverent account of trips made with her nephew to tombs and landmarks of slain presidents. Her latest is about the Puritans who emigrated to America and only she could make such stern folks amusing.
She tells us of the various sects and main personalities, such as John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts(whom she admires), Anne Hutchinson “the Puritan Oprah”, and Roger Williams, an upstart teacher who thought the original Plymouth Rock colony too lax, so went off and founded the state of Rhode Island with stricter rules. She mocks all of the infighting and power struggles saying participants would “..engage in the 17th century New England version of a duel: pamphlet fight!”
Vowell disputes the sexual repression of the Puritans with evidence of quotes and songs, many obviously influenced by Song of Solomon. Offering her own Biblical commentary, she calls the book of 2nd Samuel “…an otherwise R-rated chronicle of King David’s serial killer years.” She points out that “The United States is often called a Puritan nation. Well, here is one way in which it emphatically is not: Puritan lives were overwhelmingly, fanatically literary.”
Anecdotes, popular culture references and puppet shows all play a part in Vowell’s writings, the reader laughs and learn. Her books are educational while being highly amusing and vastly entertaining. I can hardly wait for the next one.

Riverhead Books 2008, recently released in paperback    254 pp. ISBN 978-1-59448-000-0