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from: Simon & Schuster Audio
List Price: $29.99Amazon.com's Price: $19.79 You Save: $10.20 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Audio CD
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.00882859
EAN: 9780743578196
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
ISBN: 0743578198
Label: Simon & Schuster Audio
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster Audio
Number Of Items: 6
Publication Date: October 07, 2008
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Sales Rank: 5489
Studio: Simon & Schuster Audio
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
New York Times bestselling author Sarah Vowell explores the Puritans and their journey to America in The Wordy Shipmates. Even today, America views itself as a Puritan nation, but Vowell investigates what that means -- and what it should mean. What was this great political enterprise all about? Who were these people who are considered the philosophical, spiritual, and moral ancestors of our nation? The people she finds are highly literate, deeply principled, and surprisingly feisty. Their story is filled with pamphlet feuds, witty courtroom dramas, and bloody vengeance. Along the way she asks:• Was Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop a communitarian, a Christ-like Christian, or conformity's tyrannical enforcer? Answer: Yes!
• Was Rhode Island's architect, Roger Williams, America's founding freak or the father of the First Amendment? Same difference.
• What was the Puritans' pet name for the Pope? The Great Whore of Babylon.
Sarah Vowell's special brand of armchair history makes the bizarre and esoteric fascinatingly relevant and fun. She takes us from the modern-day reenactment of an Indian massacre to the Mohegan Sun casino, from old-timey Puritan poetry, to a Mayflower-themed waterslide. The Wordy Shipmates is rich in historical fact, humorous insight, and social commentary by one of America's most celebrated voices. Thou shalt enjoy it.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - A Little More Self-Aware Than I Like
It could just be me, but I just feel like Sarah is a little too self-aware of her role in the media, and that she's trying too hard to be the person she thinks we're expecting her to be.
The book is well-written and researched, as I have come to expect from her works. I just got tired of the tone after a while. I still give it 4 stars, because it really is a very good book. Just not a great one.
Rating:  - Sarah Vowell is a gem
But is this audiobook a gem? I couldn't tell you. See, I don't have a cd player apart from my computer. And the computer can't read these discs. Fancy copy protection. Pretty dumb if you ask me.
So how to review the book? Well the audiobook has to get thumbs down for the content protection. I mean, come on, are there that many ravenous bittorent pirates who are out there saying "to heck with the latest porn and The Dark Knight, I gotta file share that new Sarah Vowell immediately!" ... Read More
Rating:  - Great Idea but Does not Fully Deliver
I will admit that I enjoyed this book very much. I think Sarah Vowell did a great job of explaining how the Puritans who first settled here in 1620 & 1630 have had a continual and ongoing impact on the U.S. Her irreverent tone and tongue in cheek approach to telling their story and her own search for their modern day remnants is very well written.
I do disagree with a number of the points that argue that Vowell argues that the somehow the Puritans created this modern religious ... Read More
Rating: - Vowell Is A Historian's John Stewart
Witty, droll, and insightful, she took on the early Massachusetts Bay Colony--the Puritans who settled Masschutsetts Bay--Salem, Boston, Cambridge, etcetera ten years after Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock--but puts what they wrote and did in the context of their time and what occurred before and after: from John Wycliffe's fourteen century English translation of the Bible to the present, including Thanksgiving episodes in Happy Days and President Bush's justification for invading Iraq.
Vowell ... Read More
Rating: - A Great Audio Book for Peopl Who Don't Like Audio Books
I'm writing about the audio version of the book, and so will gloss over some of the virtues of the book itself.
One of the great treats in Vowell's work is that it's so conversational-- erudite and yet intimate at the same time. It's no surprise that Vowell completely captures that in her reading of her own work. Audiobooks often play like radio theater, or a Reading Fraught With Import. Pop this one in the car cd player, and it's like taking a trip with a smart, funny traveling companion. ... Read More
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