On a whim I bought Sarah Vowell's latest book The Wordy Shipmates. (2009 Amazon | Barnes & Noble) If you're not familiar with Sarah Vowell, she is a humorist, journalist and voice actor. I first heard of Vowell from her very entertaining, regular contributions to the public radio show This American Life with Ira Glass.
Anyway Shipmates is Sarah's factual, yet funny retelling of our nation's Puritan beginnings with the arrival of John Winthrop and the establishment of Boston in the early 1630s. Turns out Winthrop & gang were so full of themselves — believing they were establishing God's true, new promise land as compared to those hoodlums who landed at Plymouth to the south — that they wrote everything down. Vowell has read their journals, researched the scandals and to my delight tied it all together with hilarious, witty commentary.This is how history is meant to be experienced: unabashed observation of past fools' foley. Take the book's opening:
The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.
The Puritans are true believers with a capital B. You'd have to be in order to flee with Winthrop to a "new" land across the Atlantic Ocean and survive rot-your-feet-off-freezing winters. Winthrop and his flock looked for messages from God in everything that happened to them — good and bad.
In one disgusting incident, a woman experienced a horrible still-birth and asked the midwife to secretly bury the fetus before sharing the news with Winthrop. Big mistake. Winthrop had the fetus exhumed so that he and the male leadership could "properly observe" it's horribly deformed body. Upon seeing "the devlish horns" on its head, he interpreted it as an omen from God: the woman hadn't been a true believer in the last year and she needed to be punished. Sick. Just plain sick.
Vowell's commentary doesn't stop with the Puritans. She connects the 17th-century fanaticism with contemporary politics. It was John Winthrop who firmly established America's egomaniacal beachhead with his vision to build a "city upon a hill... with all the world watching us." For the next 375 years politicians would be plagiarizing those words in order to motivate our nation's citizens into vanity-fueled crusades to bring our way of life to others around the world. Even John F. Kennedy (a Catholic) evoked Winthrop (a Protestant) in his final address to the Mass. senate. Ronald Reagan would be the most famous to steal from Winthrop. Though Reagan did add some Hollywood tinsel to the phrase by envisioning his America instead as the "shining city upon a hill."
In one disgusting incident, a woman experienced a horrible still-birth and asked the midwife to secretly bury the fetus before sharing the news with Winthrop. Big mistake. Winthrop had the fetus exhumed so that he and the male leadership could "properly observe" it's horribly deformed body. Upon seeing "the devlish horns" on its head, he interpreted it as an omen from God: the woman hadn't been a true believer in the last year and she needed to be punished. Sick. Just plain sick.
Vowell's commentary doesn't stop with the Puritans. She connects the 17th-century fanaticism with contemporary politics. It was John Winthrop who firmly established America's egomaniacal beachhead with his vision to build a "city upon a hill... with all the world watching us." For the next 375 years politicians would be plagiarizing those words in order to motivate our nation's citizens into vanity-fueled crusades to bring our way of life to others around the world. Even John F. Kennedy (a Catholic) evoked Winthrop (a Protestant) in his final address to the Mass. senate. Ronald Reagan would be the most famous to steal from Winthrop. Though Reagan did add some Hollywood tinsel to the phrase by envisioning his America instead as the "shining city upon a hill."
Vowell highlights the advancements to politics that these pioneers were making. A priest among them, Roger Williams, helped forge the belief of a firm separation of church and state. Although Roger's motivations were completely opposite of Thomas Jefferson's and our constitution's First Amendment. Ironically Roger Williams was trying to protect the purity of the Church from the corruptive powers in the State.
But the real clincher of Vowell's book is witnessing Winthrop's treatment of Anne Marbury Hutchinson. Anne challenged Winthrop's interpretation of the Lord. Them's fighting words. But the real insult to Winthrop was that Hutchinson was a woman attempting to do the man's job of religious guidance. So he had to put a stop to it. Winthrop put Anne on trial by accusing Hutchinson of sowing descent amongst the followers.... or rather his followers.
But the joke's on Winthrop, who was the judge at the trial. Hutchinson was too well spoken and soundly logical in her defense; she danced circles around Winthrop's accusations in his courtroom. But it didn't matter, because Winthrop ruled she was guilty and literally banished Huntchinson out of the commonwealth. She eventually moved to what is now New York state. In response the male leadership of Boston quickly established a university— Harvard — for men in their young community so as to guarantee that no woman would again catch a Puritan man off guard with such wicked things as reason and intelligence.
But the joke's on Winthrop, who was the judge at the trial. Hutchinson was too well spoken and soundly logical in her defense; she danced circles around Winthrop's accusations in his courtroom. But it didn't matter, because Winthrop ruled she was guilty and literally banished Huntchinson out of the commonwealth. She eventually moved to what is now New York state. In response the male leadership of Boston quickly established a university— Harvard — for men in their young community so as to guarantee that no woman would again catch a Puritan man off guard with such wicked things as reason and intelligence.
I enjoyed The Wordy Shipmates so much I also picked up two earlier books by Sarah: Assassination Vacation (2006 Amazon | Barnes & Noble) and The Partly Cloudy Patriot (2003 Amazon | Barnes & Noble). I have already finished Assassination Vacation, which is about our nation's first three Presidential assassinations: Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. The book is an amazing collection of unbelievable connections between murderer and victim. Though most of the book is about Lincoln, Vowell has shed light on the forgotten Garfield (shot just 6 weeks into his administration) and heroic rise of Teddy Roosevelt after the murder of McKinley. 
And I have only started Cloudy Patriot, so I can't fairly pass judgement on the book just yet. But seeing that I'm reading Vowell backwards (latest to oldest books), I get a smile being "introduced" to her 7-month-old nephew Owen in Cloudy Patriot after having already read about 5-year-old Owen's adventures in Shipmates. I feel as though I'm looking over Vowell's shoulder while she flips through her family's photo album.In short, if you haven't skipped and laughed through history with Sarah Vowell, now is a good time to start.
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