I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Mayflower Lives. While I was taking history classes in college I took two courses on the American Colonies. However, they did not go into great detail about life on board the Mayflower. It was very interesting to read about the lives of the people who made the voyage and created Plymouth. One of the best aspects of this book was that the author added in the final will and testament of some of the people who made the voyage. This helped the reader to gain a much more personable attachment to the person that the author was writing about. I would give this book a four out of five stars and would recommend this book to any academic library or lover of history books.

I receive a copy from NetGalley for review. I found this to be very informative and well written. The stories outlined remained interesting and it was a thorough investigation of the lives of the people we have read about in history.

Quite honestly, I expected to learn a great deal from this book, but I didn’t expect to enjoy it nearly as much as I have done. This properly footnoted history reads like a novel, and it is hard to put down. The reader keeps wanting to see what happens next! This book is simply compelling, and Martyn Whittock is to be commended on taking what could have been a repetitive, dry history and turning it into a tour-de-force. I have been recommending this book to everyone I know who is interested in history.

“Mayflower Lives” tells the history of the founding of Plymouth Colony by a group of Puritan English people by regaling the reader with the interesting, albeit shortened biographies of a number of the people at the founding of the colony. We tend to think of the “Pilgrims” as a collective group, and can easily forget that each was an individual. The biographies range from the elite members of the church, to Native Americans, to women and children. We see those who prospered, those who never fit in, and we see those who died especially during the first winter of 1620-1621.

The only thing I regret about this book was that it wasn’t longer. Although the mix of biographies is stellar, it whetted my appetite for more. I am just greedy, I guess. It is so interesting to read about actual people, not just amorphously faceless “Pilgrims.” In the course of the subjects’ lives we get a good, if somewhat cursory look at the history of the Plymouth Colony in its early years, when its survival was uncertain, to its integration into the later, larger administrative area which came to be called New England. One life, that of Richard More who was about six years old in 1620, carries us to the Salem witch trials of 1692 and beyond.

I heartily recommend this book. It is not a magisterial (read: dry) history of Plymouth Colony, it is an alternate way of looking at that history. The plentiful footnotes (and I am a reader of footnotes) give interesting paths for further reading and research; I have already availed myself of some of them. The lives described in “Mayflower Lives” are worth reading about, as these people and their culture have had such a big effect on American life and culture. If you are at all interested in history, this is a book worthy of your time.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. The opinions are my own.

Many books about the Pilgrims voyaging over on the Mayflower speak of them as a collective group. The research provided by the author is divided into sections devoted to one of the settlers, whether it be the more well-known Stephen Hopkins, William Brewster, or lesser-mentioned poor little Mary More. From a research point-of-view, this makes it easier for one to flip to the section of interest without having to pick out information of an individual from a narrative. However, this book can also be enjoyed as being read cover-to-cover. At first, I was inclined to flip to the chapters pertaining to my ancestors, but once satisfied learning more about their backstories, went back to the beginning of the book and read it from beginning to end.

This book, rather than painting the legendary picture of a saintly person stepping foot on the mythological Plymouth Rock, helps one realize the Pilgrims were regular people, some with more scandalous lives than one would originally think. It was certainly an enjoyable read, and can be enjoyed from a researcher’s perspective or as a book solely to be enjoyed for entertainment.

#MayflowerLives #NetGalley

Whittock provides a fresh facet at the original people who sailed to North America on the Mayflower. He focuses on their individual stories and how they fit within the broader spectrum of colonization. I thoroughly enjoyed his research. Reading the early Court records was more salacious than a trashy novel. The saddest and most compelling story were the four children who were aboard. They were deemed illegitimate by the court and ripped from their mother and shipped to the New World, unwanted and unloved. Only one would survive the first winter. THe author follows through with the mother's story and what happened to the surviving child. Nothing I have ever read about the Mayflower ever mentioned those four children. Mayflower Lives is a significant contribution to the canon of scholarship concerning the early history of America.

I found the book Mayflower Lives to be enjoyable read. The cast of characters and what was and would be there future lives makes this an easy page turner. You'll learn about many of the original characters of the Mayflower Settlement and how they got to be there. What some of there problems were along the way and what events helped them to reach there goal. From Plymouth to Plymouth you'll find engaging characters that didn't make the trip. Some born on the trip and others who couldn't make it after the trip. I found this to be fast paced, well written and definitely would recommend if the sea voyage history is your type of thing.