Currently within our Honors History 9 class, we have begun to divulge the history of the Mayflower and what life was exactly like for the pilgrims. In order to do this, we were given an assignment that has to do with the book Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick. As a class, all of the students were divided into groups and each individual student was given a role that included them to complete certain tasks as we read two chapters titled "The Heart of Winter" & "In a Dark and Dismal Swamp" from the book. Then, once each of us completed our tasks and read both chapters, we got back into our groups we had formed to discuss our personal findings and opinions about the book.
After Reading the first two chapters found within the book, I noticed that a few certain things stood out to me about the book. Some of the key topics or information I have found throughout the chapters were the exceptionally large death toll from illness and the harsh conditions, as well as the pilgrims overall relationships and connections between them and the Native Americans they had stumbled across. Overall I would say that the author stated details and facts very clearly so that it was easy to follow along and understand. But, I thought that the author lacked giving the book a sort of story style telling to it, resulting in the passages being fairly boring and just filled with facts rather than from any perspectives of the pilgrims or Native Americans.
As far as the author's particular style of writing and how he wrote the book, I would say that Nathaniel did a great job to give readers a detailed insight into what actually happened to the pilgrims through various historical facts. Keeping that in mind, one thing that I disliked about the author's writing was how Nathaniel didn't show much emotion or empathy a all throughout the entirety of the passages. This made any tragic events or any important moments within the book seem quite boring or insignificant. I felt that although he did give us the information we were looking for, that he needed to add some perspectives or feelings of people within the chapters to grab our attention or make us immersed in the story.
Overall though, I would recommend the book to anyone who wants to be well acquainted with the knowledge of the true story of the pilgrims. But if the person enjoys sort of an action filled or fast paced story line, I think that you should most likely look elsewhere for a more interesting book about the Mayflower. I, on the other-hand, enjoyed the book enough so that I will consider reading more chapters within it. If i had to give a rating for this book, I would give it about 2.5 or 3 stars out of 5.
