Sarah Vowell's latest title, The Wordy Shipmates, is entertaining but more educational than some of her previous books (e.g., The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Assassination Vacation). Sarah Vowell's distinctive voice may be recognized as Violet in The Incredibles. Coincidently, but appropriately, I was reading Shipmates at the time of my trip to Boston. The book tells of the English Puritans that were part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Review experted from Publishers Weekly (posted on amazon.com): Essayist and public radio regular Vowell revisits America's Puritan roots in this witty exploration of the ways in which our country's present predicaments are inextricably tied to its past. In a style less colloquial than her previous books, Vowell traces the 1630 journey of several key English colonists and members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Foremost among these men was John Winthrop, who would become governor of Massachusetts. While the Puritans who had earlier sailed to Plymouth on the Mayflower were separatists, Winthrop's followers remained loyal to England, spurred on by Puritan Reverend John Cotton's proclamation that they were God's chosen people. Gracefully interspersing her history lesson with personal anecdotes, Vowell offers reflections that are both amusing (colonial history lesson via The Brady Bunch) and tender (watching New Yorkers patiently waiting in line to donate blood after 9/11).
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