The Natives were made up of warring tribes who had fought each other for years. The idea that the Europeans came and turned otherwise peaceful Natives into warriors to protect their homeland is a farce. This book straddles the line fairly well. So many books about our Colonial beginnings obviously lean toward either the Europeans or the Natives. It took me forever to get through this book because life kept getting in the way of reading time, but it was well worth making the time to finish it. Philbrick has the knowledge to amplify details to give a wider sense of the voyage.Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick Legitimizing the one-word title, renders lively images of the emblematic ship, crew, passengers and voyage.

Philbrick has the knowledge to amplify details to give a wider sense of the voyage.' - The New York Times Book Review, 'ivid and remarkably fresh. Philbrick has the knowledge to amplify details to give a wider sense of the voyage.' - The New York Times Book Review, 'ivid and remarkably fresh. With towering figures like William Bradford and the distinctly American hero Benjamin Church at the center of his narrative, Philbrick has fashioned a fresh and compelling portrait of the dawn of American history-a history dominated right from the start by issues of race, violence, and religion. But within decades, New England would erupt into King Philip's War, a savagely bloody conflict that nearly wiped out English colonists and natives alike and forever altered the face of the fledgling colonies and the country that would grow from them. Initially the two groups-the Wampanoags, under the charismatic and calculating chief Massasoit, and the Pilgrims, whose pugnacious military officer Miles Standish was barely five feet tall-maintained a fragile working relationship. The Mayflower's religious refugees arrived in Plymouth Harbor during a period of crisis for Native Americans as disease spread by European fishermen devastated their populations.

Yet, as bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick reveals in his spellbinding new book, the true story of the Pilgrims is much more than the well-known tale of piety and sacrifice it is a fifty-five-year epic that is at once tragic, heroic, exhilarating, and profound.

From the perilous ocean crossing to the shared bounty of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim settlement of New England has become enshrined as our most sacred national myth.

Mayflower a story of courage