New in Books

I’ve always loved the absurdity of history—if for nothing
else, than for my own self-
preservation. Dwelling on the absurd
aspects of the past keeps us from being overwhelmed by the
depressing aspects, and it seems reasonable that stomaching the
morally questionable rise of modern civilization requires some
perspective. Fortunately, nobody understands this necessity better than
Sarah Vowell. She approaches the brutal stories of America with equal
parts morbidity and joie de vivre. Her previous book
Assassination Vacation examines the assassinations of presidents
Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley through the unlikely lens of a classic
American road trip—except every touristy stopover is related to
presidential assassination. The book raises compelling questions about
presidents, the men who murder them, and the type of people who take
cross-country murder pilgrimages.

Despite her horrible vacation ideas, anyone who has read
Vowell or listened to her on NPR (she’s often referred to as the one
with the “distinctive voice”) knows that the wonderful thing about her
writing is its ability to painlessly expand your knowledge on the
duller sections of American history. She makes you laugh only to slam a
spoonful of unpalatable knowledge down your throat. Vowell partially
reprises this tactic in her new book, The Wordy Shipmates, a
book about the infamously boring Puritans—more
specifically John Winthrop and the Boston Puritans. Although not as
famous as their Plymouth counterparts, it was Winthrop who gave us the
politically infamous “city upon a hill” phrase—a metaphor Vowell
returns to frequently throughout the book. But while the book starts
out whimsical enough, with sitcom depictions of Puritans (did the Fonz
give us the first Thanksgiving after all?) and pithy observations on
Puritan sex (not as boring as you might think), Vowell drops the
pretense of hilarity by the second half of Shipmates. This bait
and switch might prompt many readers to give up on the book. Although
certainly an entertainer, Vowell is first and foremost an
American-history fanatic, and she has a genuine desire to educate
readers on who the Puritans were and why they matter. As such, the
value of The Wordy Shipmates is in the eye of the beholder. If
you care about these questions, you definitely shouldn’t miss this
book. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more readable,
entertaining account of the Puritans and their influence on the
intellectual and cultural ideology of America. But if you’re not
interested, I hear the Happy Days Thanksgiving episode is really
quite excellent.

Sarah Vowell reads Mon Oct 13, Town Hall, 7:30 pm, $5.