Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York: Viking, 2006.



In Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick writes about the Plymouth Colony from the Pilgrim’s flight from Europe to the end of King Philip’s War. It is mainly a story of how the settler’s and their descendants related to the natives.

It was by no means certain that the Pilgrims would get along with the Indians. They were chiefly concerned with building a community on their religious convictions, strong beliefs they held on to in spite of persecution in England. In the New World, they would do things their way.

Even so, they were surprisingly humble. The hardships they faced in America were enough to humble anyone. They quickly realized their dependence on the sufferance of the native populations. Unwittingly, they had upset the political balance of the Indian tribes.

Massasoit was the leader of a tribe that was weakened by disease and other setbacks. Once one of the leading tribes in the regions, the Pokanokets were in danger of being subdued by their rivals. Massasoit, their sachem, built and alliance with the Pilgrims at Plymouth that kept him in a strong position.

This is only the beginning of the political intrigues that run through the history of the Plymouth colony. Many native leaders and would-be sachems used the English, their technology, and the fear many Indians felt to carve out a place for themselves in the dangerous world of inter-tribal politics.

Against this backdrop, the Pilgrims cultivated allies amongst the Indians. Though their desire for religious purity may caused them to separate themselves from the churches in England may have tended to isolate them, the discipline, self-control, humility, and justice required by their faith made them more palatable to the natives than other European settlers.

Things changed quickly within a couple of generations. The Pilgrims were chiefly interested in their religious community, but their immediate descendants were interested in land and the wealth it brought. This inevitably led to competition for resources. The Indians became resentful and the English shed humility as they gained power.

Massasoit’s grandson, Philip, doesn’t seem like a fighter. In fact, he was generally a runner. Even so, he was the spark that set ablaze a war in New England. The sachems before him sold much land to the settlers and Philip found himself without the resources to support his people. He strung things along for a while using threats and capitulations to get what he needed from the English, much like today’s small nuclear states do to the Western countries on a global scale. Plymouth officials became too high-handed with Philip and soon events and the resentments of his young warriors pushed the sachem into war.

The action of the war chapters makes them more interesting reading, but they tell an awful tale. The English killed, enslaved or displace half the native population of southern New England. The land they coveted was theirs for the taking, though Plymouth was so indebted after the war, it couldn’t afford the expansion.

The expulsion of Indians made the frontiers more dangerous. Friendly natives had once buffered the settlers from hostile tribes. Now a settler clearing the frontier was likely to be surrounded by hostile tribes and have no hope of help if they decided to purge foreigners.

As the United States expanded, the Pilgrims and King Philip’s War became lost history outside of New England. When they were brought back to popular knowledge, it was as stories transformed to be suitable for new times. Philbrick puts aside the romanticized tale of Thanksgiving not to debunk it, but to present the Pilgrims and Indians more as they were.

Nathanial Philbrick also wrote
Sea of Glory

If you’re interested in this book, you may might like
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

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Majestie by David Teems

Teems, David. Majestie: The King Behind the King James Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010.

In Majestie, David Teems presents King James VI of Scotland and I of England, authorizer of the King James Version of the Bible, as a man of great ability and many quirks. You might expect the quirks given that his father was killed, likely assassinated, under unusual circumstances. His mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was separated from him most his childhood and was eventually executed for treason by the government of her sister, Elizabeth I. James had little affection for his mother (the clerics and aristocrats who oversaw his education hated her) and much need for his powerful aunt’s support and wealth.

James chafed under the harsh tutelage of the Scottish nobles and clergy who took over his upbringing. They wanted to raise for themselves a king who would serve the interests of the Kirk and the Scottish peerage. James saw himself, and monarchs as class, as an agent of God to govern a nation and not answerable to any other authority but God. In Scotland he was browbeaten as a boy, kidnapped a as a king, and harassed by conniving powers and intrigues at every turn. It took him years to come into his own as king and become more or less the equal of his country’s nobles and church.

England, in contrast, knew how to do monarchy in the “divine right” style that James thought was suitable. From a distance, he wooed his aunt and lobbied to succeed her. Elizabeth I was an incredible conniver and welded power skillfully. She kept James and Scotland under her sway through the careful application of her wealth and the subtle promise of her throne. She came through on that promise and, at the end of her life when a named heir would not be more hazardous to her health than the imminent death she faced, she named he nephew as her heir.



England had its own contentious elements, namely Puritans. James had little use for them. He wasn’t especially fond of the Anglican bishops either, but as head of the Church of England, he found an alliance with them, leading to minimal reform, provided him with influential supporters of the type of powerful monarchy he wanted to exercise. The new English king brought with him from the Scottish throne he still held a wit an education to browbeat reformers and reactionaries alike. James liked one proposal the Puritans offered almost as an afterthought: a new translation of the Bible.

As you might imagine, Teems devotes a fair amount of space to the Bible translation that popularly bears King James’ name. It’s an interesting subject in itself. These chapters describe the how the idea came to be, how the work of translation was done, and some of the known translators. In the old-fashioned sense, James was the “author,” initiator and motivator, of the project. He was anxious to see it accomplished.

Teems has little to say about James’ life in the years following the translation. He believes the king peeked in the translation years and was never quite as majestic in the last 14 years of his life. The loss of a child, and later wife, can take some of the life out of a person. And we are all sometimes overcome by our own weaknesses. Teems seems to give the king a break in his earlier years, not avoiding but not overemphasizing the monarch’s many foibles, and maybe he should have carried that into James’ sunset years.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
God’s Secretaries by Adam Nicolson
In the Beginning by Alister McGrath
King James Bible
Wide as the Waters by Benson Bobrick

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor, a book by Cathryn J. Prince, is a biography of Benjamin Silliman. Silliman helped to establish the United States as a scientific leader.

Silliman was part of the post-Revolutionary generation. His father, Gold Selleck Silliman, was a general in the Continental Army. Benjamin Silliman had hoped to make a name for himself in the law, but was persuaded by a family friend to pursue science, though it was not a career likely to lead to prominence in America.

American science was not well regarded in those days, especially in Europe. A falling star, and Silliman’s diligent and careful study, changed that.

In 1807, a large meteor fell over Weston, Connecticut. Silliman, a very young, new professor of chemistry at Yale, and his colleague James Kingsley, went as quickly as they could to the remote community. The carefully interviewed witnesses, surveyed the location of meteorites, and collected samples. Silliman took samples back to New Haven to analyze them in his lab.

Silliman helped to establish that meteors originated in outer space. Popular theories at the time were that they came for lunar or terrestrial volcanoes or somehow formed in the atmosphere. The notion that something from outer space could fall to Earth was radical.

Silliman other contributions to American science were his work as a popularizer and mentor. He was an able teacher and able to communicate science to a broad audience. His public lectures on science around the country were very popular. He also helped to train a generation of American scientists. At the beginning of his career, he had to go to Europe to study chemistry and geology, at the end of his career and budding scientist could be educated in the U.S.

Silliman’s ability to reach the people of his day was his devotion to his Christian faith. He saw no serious conflict between his religion and his science. He was able to stay out of debates with clergymen that would have brought opposition to his scientific views.

In spite of the title, I found little reason to drag the president into it. Thomas Jefferson was in office at the time of the Weston Fall. Silliman, like other New England Federalists, had little liking for his policies, nor did Jefferson much care for his adversaries in the region. In addition, the president did not highly esteem geology or astronomy, instead preferring biological sciences that he considered to have more practical application. Prince brings up these difference in the book, but they never seem to add up to a serious conflict between Silliman and Jefferson.

Prince, Cathryn J.  A Professor, a President, and a Meteor: The Birth of American Science. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2011.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Little History of Science by William Bynum

Copernicus’ Secret by Jack Repcheck

Defining Noah Webster by K. Alan Snyder

The Essential Engineer by Henry Petroski

His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson

Miss Leavitt's Stars by George Johnson

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

Triumvirate by Bruce Chadwick

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

Duel with the Devil by Paul Collins

The body of a young woman, Elma Sands, was found in a well outside of Manhattan on the second day of 1800. A carpenter who boarded in her family’s house, some suggested he was her secret lover, was immediately accused. The case led to one of the first sensationalized, broadly followed murder trials in the young United States. Paul Collins recounts the events in Duel with the Devil.

The carpenter, Levi Weeks, might well have been convicted of the crime had he not had a legal dream team with the competence to show the weakness of the prosecution case and suggest an alternate explanation for Sand’s death. That is one of the interesting things about his trial. His defense team consisted of political rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr along with their fellow Revolutionary War veteran Brockhurst Livingston.

The political and legal elite of New York state, and especially Manhattan, of those days was close knit and often resulted in odd combinations. Hamilton and Burr were both in debt to Weeks’ brother Ezra, a prominent builder, which may explain their participation.

Weeks was found not guilty after what was considered a very long trial for the time, mainly due to the great number of prosecution witnesses. Sands’ murder was never properly solved.

She was probably killed by another roomer in her house, Richard Croucher. He had fled England to escape the insane asylum after his behavior led him trouble and criminal charges. Shortly after Weeks’ trial, he was convicted of raping his 13-year old stepdaughter. He was released after three years on the agreement that he would leave the country. He went to Virginia instead, where he fleeced the merchants of Richmond. It appears he eventually made his way back to England, where he continued criminality led to his execution.

Hamilton and Burr famously faced declines. They dueled and Hamilton died from the wound he received. Their co-counsel fared better; Livingston went on to serve as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Weeks left Manhattan. We worked his way west and became a successful builder in Natchez.

Collins’ book reads almost like a novel. It is interesting, quick-reading history.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Defining Noah Webster by K. Alan Snyder

The Great Stink by Clare Clark

Triumvirate by Bruce Chadwick

Collins, Paul. Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton & Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America’s First Sensational Murder Mystery. New York: Crown, 2013.

Good Naked by Joni B. Cole

Writing can be challenging, outstanding writing usually is, but writers don’t have to be miserable. Author, editor and writing instructor Joni B. Cole offers some perspective for writers in Good Naked.

Cole dispels myths of writing. For instance, writers rarely produce perfect first drafts; mediocre writing is okay because it is a place to start. You don’t have to suffer to produce art, but you do have to put in the effort and deal with the difficulties.

Writers need a balanced optimism. Acknowledge the challenges, but believe you can overcome them. Add to it a touch of humility; Cole believes real writers put aside pride and get the help they need to reach their goals, such as joining a writing group.

Cole also runs counter to some popular advice on writing. She doesn’t believe in outlines. Instead, work the parts that are meaningful, that call out to you. You can arrange them and fill in the gaps later as the big picture forms in your mind. It’s easy to imagine her chapters coming together this way, with images, stories, ideas and remembrances being assembled and reworded until they flow together.

Each chapter of the book is an essay. Though the book as a whole has an order and flow, one could read or reread a helpful chapter without needing to flip back to preceding pages to make sense of it.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall

Just Write by Walter Dean Myers

Keeping a Journal You Love by Sheila Bender

Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed

The Right to Write by Julia Cameron

Shut Up & Write! by Judy Bridges

Write Naked by Jennifer Probst

Write Your Heart Out by Rebecca McClanahan

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Cole, Joni B. Good Naked: Reflections on How to Write More, Write Better and Be Happier. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2017.

The Society for Useful Knowledge by Jonathan Lyons

Colonial America was a place that demanded much of settlers. While many appreciated the value of book learning, many came to America because of their strong opinions about a particular book, their new home required them to focus on practical knowledge for developing land, repairing hard-to-get goods and getting the most out of one’s one labor. In The Society for Useful Knowledge, Jonathan Lyons explores this emphasis on utility and its influence on colonial science and the revolutionary generation.

Ben Franklin is the most significant figure discussed by Lyon. He developed an appreciation early in life for the value of skilled labor, he was a printer himself, and he maintained this even as he became America’s most famous scientist and the new nation’s representative in Europe. Franklin’s influence in the American scientific community was huge even though he spent years in Europe; his connections to European scientists were part of the reason for his influence at home.

Franklin and his compatriots saw a great value in encouraging and disseminating useful information in science and engineering, especially if it might increase the productivity of American agriculture and manufacturing. Franklin founded one of the earliest scientific societies in the colonies and it eventually had many imitators. He also supported the establishment of what eventually became the University of Pennsylvania, though he broke with the other organizers when his emphasis on utility conflicted with their desire to provide an education focused on classical languages in the European mold.

Though Franklin was not trying to establish institutions that would lead to the revolution, he and many who worked with him did it anyway. Franklin and his Quaker neighbors preferred education in useful knowledge and trades. Many colonial scientists were self-taught and learned on their farms and workshops. They saw little value in the classical education popular in Europe that distinguished the aristocracy and upper class from others, but did little in their minds to suit a person for a role of value in the community. Americans needed to get stuff done and they didn’t care much about a person’s pedigree. This opened up opportunities for people of low social status to grow in wealth and influence. (Even in Europe, amateur scientists from many classes were common and it especially leveled the social ground around England’s coffeehouses.)

Franklin’s circle of mechanics and part-time scientists influenced the generation that followed them. Franklin’s personal reputation allowed him to be a leader in that generation who became the founders of the United States. The emphasis on practicality and experience, with the accompanying devaluing of ancient authorities in dead languages, influenced American political thought as well as its science, technology and education. The connections he made as a postmaster and scientific communicator also formed a model for the political influencers of his time.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

46 Pages by Scott Liell

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

Lyons, Jonathan. The Society for Useful Knowledge: How Benjamin Franklin and His Friends Brought the Enlightenment to America. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013.

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. Bradford Enlarged Edition. 1776. Reprinted in 46 Pages. Scott Liell. New York: MJF Books, 2003.

Thomas Pain came to America form his home in England at the encouragement of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin encouraged Paine to write about conflict the American colonies and Britain. The product was Common Sense.

Common Sense was an essay making the case for American independence. In a sense, it is two essays, one directly supporting the call for independence and one providing background on the impossibility of liberty under the British system.

The first parts of the essay deals with the concept of government in general. In particular, Paine argues against monarchy as a form of government. To him, monarchy is unnatural and hereditary monarchy insanity. Even a constitutional monarchy that gave real powers to a king, such as England had at the time, could not guarantee the peoples right, particularly in a colony where it was in the monarch’s and mother country’s interest for the colony to be dependent. Paine advocated throwing off the British monarchy and adopting a constitutional republic.

The latter half dealt with directly with American independence. Building on his earlier statements, he argued that America could not meet its potential if it did not act on its own interest. Paine saw a confluence of things, particularly the population and resources of the continent that made for the best possible time to pursue independence.

In this edition, Paine offered an answer to some of the detractors of his first edition, especially the pacifist among the Quakers. He argued that peace under Britain was impossible, but that independence would bring a lasting peace. In addition, there was already an aggressor on the continent in the form of British troops. To Paine, taking up arms against Britain was not to start a war, but a defense against foreign attacks.


Paine’s arguments seemed to tip the scale. Common Sense was widely read among the founding fathers. Within months of its publication, the Declaration of Independence was published.

If you're interested in Common Sense, you may also be intersted in:
His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis
A Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

Mr. America by Mark Adams

Benarr Macfadden was named Bernard McFadden by his parents; he chose the modified name to suit himself. He was born into severe poverty in the Missouri Ozarks shortly after the Civil War. He would become a self-made millionaire famous for his physique, his stunts and his opinions. Mark Adams recounts his story in Mr. America.

Macfadden became fascinated with health and bodybuilding as a youth in St. Louis, where is visited a gym with his uncle. He had been sick much of his childhood, which is not surprising given the poverty, malnutrition and undeveloped medicine of the time. With hard work and a knack for self-promotion, he was eventually able to afford to join the gym (it cost $15 for an initial membership, close to $400 today).

Macfadden pursued a lot of jobs as a kid and young adult, spending very little time in school. In bodybuilding and training he found his way into a career. Particularly, he started to follow a career path that had been blazed by another strongman, Eugen Sandow. Mcfadden saw Sandow’s performances, organized by Franz Ziegfeld, Jr., at the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. He began doing a version of Sandow’s act and even took it to his distant mentor’s adopted homeland, England.

When he returned from his year in England, he brought back another idea borrowed from Sandow. He began publishing a magazine titled Physical Culture. The magazine was an outlet for him to sell exercise equipment and promote his ideas about fitness, diet, sex, nudity, marriage and other topics related to health and happiness. It was the foundation of what grew into a publishing empire in which Macfadden helped to pioneer true confession (long before Jerry Spring and Oprah Winfrey), celebrity culture and tabloid journalism. He is promotion of health information set the path for American health experts that followed with a mix of quackery and sound notions that turned out to be ahead of their time.

I’d be glad to go on about Macfadden, his accomplishment and his sometimes strange life. Instead, I should just suggest you read Mr. America.

Actually, I had been looking forward to reading Mr. America. I’ve seen Adam’s book referenced by other who have discussed Macfadden in the context of fitness, health culture and popular publishing. Macfadden led and interesting life suitable for a novel. Adam’s biography doesn’t quite read like a novel, but it is entertaining and approachable, and I recommend it to those interested in Macfadden or in the popular culture of the early 20^th Century.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Better for All the World by Harry Bruinius

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

Life is So Good by George Dawson & Richard Glaubman

Making the American Body by Jonathan Black

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Miss Mizzou by J. B. Winter

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

Rising Tide by James M. Barry

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

War Against the Weak by Edwin Black

Adams, Mark. Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet. New York: It Books, 2009.

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

I was going read only fiction over the holidays and give myself a break from writing reviews.  So I picked up Arthur & George by Julian Barnes.  I remembered I reviewed The Sherlockian by Graham Moore and began to feel obligated to review this other novel about Arthur Conan Doyle as well.

The books are very different.  The Sherlockian is a thriller and it is entirely fictional.  Barnes’ book is a more literary, historical novel based on real events.  If he had been writing a thriller, the story would have started when Doyle got involved in overturning the wrongful conviction of solicitor George Adelji for mutilating and killing animals in the rural community where he was raised by a Scottish mother and an Indian father who converted to Anglicanism and served as a vicar.  This doesn’t occur until you’ve already read 70 percent of the book.  Barnes doesn’t indulge the achronologic order a novel permits, but he does take his time, gets into the heads of his protagonists, and takes a long look at side stories.  This is why I refer to it as a literary novel in contrast to a thriller, which is more to-the-point and plot driven.

I wonder why Barnes decided to write a novel instead of a nonfiction account of the events.  I suspect there was plenty of source material.  Doyle was a prolific writer.  Newspapers abounded in England at the time.  Clues to the truth can be found in even the most obfuscatory court and government documents.  The Adelji case led to new laws, including the introduction of appeals courts to the British criminal justice system.  I suspect he wanted to explore themes that interested him without too strictly bound to a factual narrative.

There is the suggestion of a theme in the opening chapters.  Doyle and Adelji are introduced through their childhood exposures to death, something that would have been common in the 1800s.  Doyle famously became a spiritualist.  He was committed to the idea that death was passage into another life and that gifted people could communicate with the departed.  I do not know if Adelji’s views are on the record, but Barnes depicts him as something between neutral and skeptical.  He also seems indifferent and uncurious.  The only fact he is sure of is that everyone dies.  What happens after death, if anything, is unknown, and he finds the evidence of an afterlife to be weak.  These views are not contrasted; they are juxtaposed.

Ethics may be another theme.  Doyle derived his ethical view from his notions of chivalry.  Adelji, who comes across as a high-functioning person with Asperger’s syndrome, found his place in the order and logic of the law.  There was plenty of unethical activity, or at least human venality, presented in the story: racism, eugenic notions, sloppy police work, unjust courts, and heel-dragging bureaucrats.

I might have preferred a straight nonfiction account of the events.  Barnes novelization worked for me, though.  It was certainly more effective than the partial fictionalization attempted by David Gelernter in his history of the 1939 World’s Fair.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont

The Great Stink by Clare Clark

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

Barnes, Julian.  Arthur & George.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

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