The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World

by Nathaniel Philbrick

Adapted from the New York Times bestseller Mayflower ! After a dangerous journey across the Atlantic, the Mayflower?s passengers were saved from certain destruction with the help of the Natives of the Plymouth region. For fifty years a fragile peace was maintained as Pilgrims and Native Americans learned to work together. But when that trust was broken by the next generation of leaders, a conflict erupted that nearly wiped out Pilgrims and Natives alike. Adapted from the New York Times bestseller Mayflower specifically for younger readers, this edition includes additional maps, artwork, and archival photos.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Historical, School, Book Club, The United States Of America

368 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2008

About the author

Philbrick was Brown’s first Intercollegiate All-American sailor in 1978; that year he won the Sunfish North Americans in Barrington, RI; today he and his wife Melissa sail their Beetle Cat Clio and their Tiffany Jane 34 Marie-J in the waters surrounding Nantucket Island.

After grad school, Philbrick worked for four years at Sailing World magazine; was a freelancer for a number of years, during which time he wrote/edited several sailing books, including Yaahting: A Parody (1984), for which he was the editor-in-chief; during this time he was also the primary caregiver for his two children. After moving to Nantucket in 1986, he became interested in the history of the island and wrote Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People. He was offered the opportunity to start the Egan Maritime Institute in 1995, and in 2000 he published In the Heart of the Sea, followed by Sea of Glory, in 2003, and Mayflower. He is presently at work on a book about the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Mayflower was a finalist for both the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in History and the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was winner of the Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction. In the Heart of the Sea won the National Book Award for nonfiction; Revenge of the Whale won a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award; Sea of Glory won the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize and the Albion-Monroe Award from the National Maritime Historical Society. Philbrick has also received the Byrne Waterman Award from the Kendall Whaling Museum, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for distinguished service from the USS Constitution Museum, the Nathaniel Bowditch Award from the American Merchant Marine Museum, the William Bradford Award from the Pilgrim Society, the Boston History Award from the Bostonian Society, and the New England Book Award from the New England Independent Booksellers Association.

from his website

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Middle Grade March

I found this book which is the Middle Grade version of a book I've been planning to read anyway in a Little Free Library. I'm still planning on reading the Adult version but I did really enjoy this book.....

Enjoy is probably not the best word to use but I deemed it worthy of 4 Stars...4 stars for a Middle Grade. I think this book was informative and easy read but it didn't dumb down the awful aspects of the founding of America. So many times I wanted to tell these Indigenous Nations not to trust those white people. It really made me angry reading this book. I feel like it's easy to forget that The Americas were founding through genocide. We should never forget that the lives we live today are built on the blood of Indigenous Nations...also Black blood but that's a subject for another day.

If I wasn't still battling this 4 month long reading slump I would have read it much much faster. Most days I wanted to pick it up but my slump wouldn't allow it.

Overall I would recommend this book not just to kids but to adults who just don't have the mental energy for an Adult Nonfiction.

[Christopher Obert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Mayflower and the Pilgrims’ New World is a very well written book that I enjoyed immensely. Much of the information contained in this book I did not know and I found it exciting as well as informative. Being a born New Englander with immigrant as well as Native American blood, I am a little ashamed that I did not already know the true story of the Pilgrims and their adventures. This book is not a book that paints a flowery picture of colonial life but a harsh and sometime tragic tale. I am now bitten by the bug to know even more of the rich history of both the New World settlers and the original native peoples. Thank you Nathaniel for opening my eyes to the history in my own back yard…

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was good although it sometimes got off topic. The first two sections were great! They were all about the Pilgrims planning to go to the New World and arriving there. They were also about there relationship with Massasoit and his Indians. The book got very tedious near the end when the focus turned to King Phillips' War. The hole last part of the book was all about battles of the war and they blended together and I got really confused and bored. I don't think the title should be called the Mayflower because the book barely talks about the Mayflower or the original "Pilgrims". Although parts of the book were boring there were lots of great photos and maps that really helped me see where the story was taking place. If you like history and the time period from 1600-1660's then this is the book for you, but, if you are not interested in war then you might want to choose another book on this time period.

[Scott Potter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book. The first 40% and the last 40% of the book were fascinating. The development of the Mayflower trip, the landings, and the settlements. The middle sort of got bogged down. The ending about King Phillip's war and the way it played out was very interesting. The epilogue was a fascinating read about how this impacted the future of the US and immigration.

[Mary Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I read parts one and two. I skimmed through part three, which was detailed accounts of the war fifty years after the pilgrims’ arrival.

I wanted to read this book because I have had a bad attitude about Thanksgiving for a while. We are told the lovely story of the pilgrims and Indians eating together in perfect harmony, but as I grew and learned more about how America’s true history, I doubted everything I had learned about Thanksgiving as a child.


I can now celebrate Thanksgiving knowing that for a brief time in history the pilgrims did, in fact, have a reasonably peaceful relationship with a tribe of Native Americans.

From the very beginning there were wicked and racist white men, but there were also settlers that were comfortable and respectful of cultural differences. There were many who became good friends with their native neighbors.

Things did fall apart pretty quickly within the next several decades though. The pilgrims originally made treaties with Massasoit. The treaties set up a system
of government that, if nothing else, kept people from killing eachother. Those treaties were left to Massasoit’s son at his death.

Massasoit’s son was uncomfortable with how much power his father had relinquished, and he rejected the treaties of peace. Feeling that he should be treated as a king, he began to stir up unrest in an effort to get what he felt were his “subjects” in line.

The pilgrims, in reaction, fought back. But, things quickly got uglier than the Native Americans had expected. To the Native Americans, war was about bravery & honor. To the settlers, war was about killing as many people as possible. They began doing atrocious things (“in the name of God”) to maintain their hold on the land.

I couldn’t bear to read the last third of this book. It broke my heart to read about what eventually ended in genocide.

I give the book a solid five stars. I would not have complained if there had been more charts and visual guides to help me keep track of names and dates though.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a New England native I found it fascinating to read the details of things that happened so many years ago in the world surrounding me. The author did his homework with his research of correspondence from and between the early colonists. He did a great job in describing the challenges and hardships along the the significant losses they experienced.

The back and forth with the many native American tribes was enlightening as I thought that most of the conflicts between the settlers in the native Americans occurred out west. The descriptions about the many battles with the many tribes was hard to follow at times without really focusing. As a result the last third of the book was not as interesting to me. Overall I am grateful to have somebody recommend this book to me.

[parsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Mayflower, Philbrick tells much more than the story of our beloved Pilgrims trip across the Atlantic. In many ways, it is three stories about the Puritans and other Pilgrims: one for their European experiences, another for the first five years as they establish Plymouth and third, a vivid account of the King Phillip war some 50 years later. As always, Philbrick is meticulous in his research and he tells the story with precision and with so many details that it sometimes reads as historical fiction, but to be sure, it is non-fiction.

I enjoyed the stories of how the Pilgrims and the Mayflower initially rambled over much of Cape Cod thinking that this new land was too barren to support life. Of course, eventually they found their way to Plymouth, which turned out to be just a fair site to establish a beachhead. I also found it refreshing to read that the survival of the group continued to be tenuous at best and the famous Thanksgiving celebration was a much more muted event than is commonly thought. I also find it interesting that the Puritans felt so strongly about not embellishing their faith beyond the pure writings of the Bible that they did not celebrate Christmas. I suspect they would be disappointed to realize that a similarly key US holiday was created in their honor. I give Mayflower a Good Read.

[Kris Dersch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this. As a young reader's edition it is very approachable, would be entirely appropriate for a middle school or even upper elementary school audience but as an adult I didn't feel talked down to at all.
The research is clearly meticulous. The first two sections are excellent, very edifying and I learned a lot. The end starts to meander...a battle for battle depiction of the war is hard to follow, he seemed to be trying to pick a couple of characters and take us through their journeys of the war to avoid that and wasn't always successful although that effort helped. I felt like overall the balance was good but may have skewed towards the Puritans and "praying" Indians later in the narrative, probably inevitable because history is written by the winners and he reminds us of how few of the native peoples survived, but still noticeable. Overall, though, very good book.

[Lauryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is very good. It tells the story of the Pilgrims, the Indians, and the King. It is good to learn about topics like this. The book is very interesting. It was not dull, or boring. The book had a lot of interesting points.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This ain't what they taught us in high school. If you are at all interested in the beginnings of our country, the early fight for religious freedom, and the early history of European settlers with native Americans, this is a must read.

[Claudia Remenar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as part of a family book club suggested by my son Philip. I ended up reading the version adapted for young people which was slightly shorter than the original. That said, it would be a challenging story for middle schoolers. At times this old seasoned reader struggled to keep the characters straight.

The factual, historic account of the settlers of the Mayflower, celebrated at Thanksgiving, has been changed and watered down in myth. This book sets that record straight. The original ship carrying English Pilgrims landed in what became Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620, and these earliest settlers went on to create what became America. (For context, the first Deschaine settlers arrived in Quebec City from France in 1648.) The Plymouth Pilgrims were religious separatists seeking freedom to practice their religion. They arrived to a land heavily populated by native peoples--as many as 20,000 in the area. Without the cooperation of these Indians, the settlers would likely have perished.

However, the second generation of Pilgrims lost their values of cooperation and waged war after war upon the native people. The entire third part of the book is taken up with these wars, which became tedious to follow despite the help of maps. Overall, the native peoples of southern New England lost between 60 to 80% of their numbers from wars and disease.

Ultimately I gained a solid understanding of the reliable truth of the first settlers to America, and I look forward to a lively discussion at our Thanksgiving table.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I learned some new information about the Pilgrims, Squanto and the Mayflower. Squanto may not have been that 'perfect' Native American with true good intentions. He was definitely most loyal to his people who perished before the Pilgrims' arrival.

The Pilgrims were also flawed. What were then thinking coming to the New World so ill-prepared? Over half perished within the first year. They didn't know how to farm and they came to a new land? How on earth were they going to feed themselves?? The Native Americans on the fringes watching their Pilgrims must have thought the Pilgrims were a comedy routine, if they had words for such a thing! But, those Native Americans were not completely pedestal approved. They made a lot of mistakes, assumptions about other tribes, got sick, and more.

In other words, this book brings to REAL life the adventures, daily routines, wars, relationships of the real Pilgrims, the real Native Americans, and the real 'heroes' we read about and honor (worship) today. In short, they were real people with real flaws and those are the real people in history.

[ElsaMakotoRenge · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is REALLY good! It's not your usual boring tone that you usually find in textbooks, either. In fact, the author includes so many details and his style is such that it almost feels like a historical fiction novel, but of course it isn't. There are also lots of pictures scattered throughout the pages (paintings, sketches, documents, letters, artifacts of the time, etc). I will say a good portion of the book is not actually about the Mayflower, which was actually pretty cool since I haven't read any "fun books" about the time period. Heh. I like history, but I don't care for the 'textbook tone' in a lot of books. I ain't reading no boring textbook in my free time. (Bad grammar used on purpose;))
This book would be an awesome resource if you had to write essays about the Pilgrims' time period. It's engaging, clearly organized, and best of all, IT'S NOT BORING. I can't stress that enough. Evidently this is 'adapted for young people' from the author's other Mayflower book, but honestly I would 100% recommend this book to any age, whether it's as a leisure reading book or extra reading/source for school.

[David A-S · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World takes the myth out of Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims had lost half of their population, had committed some ugly atrocities against the natives, and were deeply struggling in every way. The Natives were trying to survive European plagues and illnesses, a changing landscape with the arrival of the Pilgrims and their muskets, and intertribal tension. Free of American mythology, the meal and the day are still worth celebrating, as they did on that day honor the harvest, reconcilation, and multicultural understanding, but it is certainly more complicated.

Unfortunately, as Philbrick, meticulously and readably notes, the story doesn't end there. Philbrick takes us up to King Philip's War.

[Jayne]

The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World is an easier to read version of Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower. I learned a lot about Native Americans in MA, CT, and RI and now understand how towns, places, and statues got their names which was very interesting to me since I live in MA and visit CT and RI. I read the Kindle version and the lack of proper use of lowercase and uppercase letters was abundant throughout the book which I found annoying. The book gives a glimpse into how the Pilgrims and Indians got along, how they made peace at times, and it also tells in detail about King Phillip's War. It is a great read at Thanksgiving time and shows which Native American and Pilgrim leaders tried to be friendly, as well as those who did not.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a fascinating history of the Pilgrims journey from Europe to the New World in 1620 and stretching to the sailing of the Seaflower at the end of the Indian war in 1676. With two generations the native people and influx of Europeans went from tentative peace to war in a series of preventable mistakes. There is a lot of history I wasn't familiar with, from Mayflower sponsorship to the enormous number of Europeans that came within twenty years. It can be a bit slow, but there are lots of maps and historical images to keep it from weighing too heavily.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Instead of Landing on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock Landed ...

Everybody I the early 1600s had a very hard time in North America. The Native American with the introduction of European diseases and broken promises, as well as the European settlers with their lack of knowledge and poor supplies. This book gives an excellent description of the many hardships as well as the alliances that kept changing. Especially, the fact that alliances were often founded on personal friendships and upon who had momentum at the time.

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so much more than just the story of the pilgrims arrival in North America in 1620. It tells the story of the interaction between the colonists and the Indian peoples already here which leads up to King Philip's War which ended in 1676. By this time there were many more English colonists and many towns. A clash of cultures was inevitable, but there were many alliances between the English and different Indian groups. It was much more complex than just the English against the Indians.

[Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of the Mayflower and the Pilgrims is one that's often simplified and told to American children as the country's origin story. So, as with other stories such as this, delving in just a little deeper reveals a whole world of nuance that often goes unnoticed. This certainly isn't the story we were told as children (nor was I expecting it to be).

Philbrick is pretty even-handed in his narrative. Though, toward the very end of the book, a bit of that saccharine simplicity and national pride does start seeping back into the story. Overall, very interesting and worth the read.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read with my son for his 8th grade history course. At first I thought this was a historical fiction novel because it is written so well, like a story. After doing research, it’s actually a biography about the Pilgrims, Native Americans, and new settlers. There was so much information I never knew of and more of the trials and tribulations for both the settlers and Native Americans trying to co-exist. No sugar coating in this biography. I’m glad my son read this book and glad I read it along with him because we will able to have those difficult conversations of how things really were.

[Thomsen Lord · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good book, and it really showed how the journey of the Pilgrims was much different than most people think. However, it seemed biased to the English at times and I felt that they had to clarify many times that the English also had weaknesses. About 350 pages, small print, took about two weeks to finish. I also feel like it was more just taking quotes and describing the action, and that can get boring sometimes.

[Allyn Van Dusen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was an amazing book that turned my understanding of American history upside down. Philbrick makes it feel real and like you yourself are watching the action from a safe distance, and he helps to give some equilibrium to all the unbalancing turns of events. I was simply shocked at the gore and horrors that were inflicted upon one another by both the natives and the "godly" pilgrims. I definitely would like to read more of his books.

[Sharon Royle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. The title of the Mayflower was a little deceiving since just the beginning of the book documents the actual voyage. Nevertheless, the detail of how the first pilgrims survived all the different Native American tribes is really interesting to me. The tribes would fight with each other and with the Pilgrims. it's a wonder anyone survived and they barely did!

Well worth the read!!

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very very interesting look at the Pilgrims' arrival in the "new world" through King Phillip's War. It's always interesting to learn more than the paragraph in your elementary text book about an iconic event in American history. Aside from his snarky tone about the Plymouth rock on proud display for the tourists, this is a solid historical account.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in conjunction with the adult/unabridged version (audiobook) so basically I just skim read this and looked at the pictures.

The kindle version has a really annoying flaw - every capital S in the book seems to be rendered as a small s. It drive me crazy. A lot of important names and places start with s like squanto and every missing capital S bugged me.

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good book. It was long yes. It does get a little boring for a chapter or two towards the end but once I got close to the end I was much more interested and intrigued. I would recommend. The beginning was great learning about what happened in the very beginning and about what happened before they made it to Plymouth.

[Xavy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an interesting historical summary and it was easy to read. I appreciated all the breaks within the chapters so I could read for a few minutes, put it down, and pick it up easily again. Lots of names and places, but I was able to follow it because it kept moving. Fast-paced. The maps sprinkled throughout were also helpful.

[MaryAnne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the original Mayflower book and found it less engaging (gave it 3 stars). It’s been awhile so I don’t remember but it may have been too detailed for my liking. This version I found to be compelling. I would love a companion book describing locations of the current sites, museums, and monuments corresponding to the events portrayed in the book.

[Dot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having spent time on Cape Cod with relatives through out my life with relatives and having a vague memory of being there on Thanksgiving in 1957, I had an appreciation for this book. I visited the Plymouth Plantation site and one of my mom's cousins actually worked in costume as a Puritan woman on the Mayflower replica in the 60 & 70s. This nonfiction book I found enjoyable and well documented.