Mayflower Voyage, Community, War [Paperback]

Vivid and remarkably fresh...Philbrick has recast the Pilgrims for the ages. --The New York Times Book Review

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History
New York TimesBook Review Top Ten books of the Year

How did America begin? That simple question launches the acclaimed author ofIn the Hurricane's EyeandValiant Ambitionon an extraordinary journey to understand the truth behind our most sacred national myth: the voyage of theMayflowerand the settlement of Plymouth Colony. As Philbrick reveals in this electrifying history of the Pilgrims, the story of Plymouth Colony was a fifty-five year epic that began in peril and ended in war. New England erupted into a bloody conflict that nearly wiped out the English colonists and natives alike. These events shaped the existing communites and the country that would grow from them.Startling [and] fascinating. (The New York Times)Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of In the Heart of the Sea, winner of the National Book Award; Mayflower, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Bunker Hill, winner of the New England Book Award; Sea of Glory; The Last Stand; Why Read Moby Dick?; Away Off Shore; Valiant Ambition, and most recently, In the Hurricane's Eye. He lives in Nantucket.Preface: The Two Voyages

We all want to know how it was in the beginning. From the Big Bang to the Garden of Eden to the circumstances of our own births, we yearn to travel back to that distant time when everything was new and full of promise. Perhaps then, we tell ourselves, we can start to make sense of the convoluted mess we are in today.

But beginnings are rarely as clear-cut as we would like them to be. Take, for example, the event that most Americans associate with the start of the United States: the voyage of the Mayflower.

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