Mayflower: the real story

On account of new fatherhood, I took a short hiatus from writing the Talk of Maine column in Down East, but the new issue has my review of a new book on the Pilgrims: Nick Bunker's Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History.

As you'll read in the review, Mr. Bunker's account sheds new light on the Mayflower voyagers and the role early Maine played in their successes. As Bunker is from England -- not New England -- his book is liberated from the tropes of the Bay State's historical myth makers, giving us a refreshing and more accurate perspective on the Pilgrim experience.

(By contrast, here's what I've said of Nathanial Philbrick's popular Mayflower, a more readable account that failed to break with the Mass-o-centric paradigm handed down by Harvard's Victorian Era dons.)

I have a feature in the next issue of the magazine, but I'll be back at Talk of Maine in the January issue of the magazine, which hits the racks the second week of December.