Today's selection is from 2008: Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates. So where was I ten years ago? In much the same place that I am now, depressingly. I was working a job that didn't pay me enough to keep me alive (check), hanging out in the city I graduated from (check), trying to find something to keep body and soul together (aaaaand check). Well, that puts things into perspective.
I had at that point never heard of Sarah Vowell. I didn't read a lot of nonfiction at the time, was just starting to broaden my reading horizons. Since then I have read Assassination Vacation and Lafayette in the Somewhat United States due to suggestions by Stuff You Missed In History Class and later Get Booked though the specific episodes escape me.
The Wordy Shipmates is a brief exploration of the Massachusetts Bay Colony focusing mainly on John Winthrop, Roger Williams, and Anne Hutchinson. I readily admit that I had no familiarity with these figures except a hazy memory of Anne Hutchinson helping to found Rhode Island based on a premise of religious freedom. American history has never been my particular area of interest or expertise, and aside from middle and high school history classes long forgotten, I haven't delved much into the subject. But then Hamilton happened, and I decided I needed more American history under my hat.
Vowell seems to have an affection for John Winthrop in particular, and given the bulk of the first-hand narratives come from his journals, that's understandable. It's hard to read the minutiae of a life and not become at least a little sympathetic. That said, this is still a man living in the 1600s, in a Puritan country, if not of the Puritan faith (she is at pains to point out that the Massachusetts Bay colonists aren't Separatists), so I had little enough in common to share as far as experiences or beliefs.
The main bugbear I have here is Calvinism. Good lord, if there were ever a more hopeless, insidious philosophy more widely spread and destructive, I've yet to become acquainted with it. How on earth would you even get up in the morning if you believed that whatever you did, you were either damned or saved from the start? What would be the point? Where would you ever find joy or peace? That level of perceived certainty would (and did) drive people mad.
Overall, a quick read, and a light touch on a period in history I didn't know much about. Enough toothy bits to spark interest in further more in-depth reading. I will say my used copy was merrily defaced throughout by the previous owner who has 1-dreadful handwriting and 2-a dim view of feminism and politics, and yet picked up this book. Wherever you are sir (for it must be a sir), I wish you happiness in your narrow view, and I wish you wouldn't write in pen. I will undoubtedly spend a fortune trying to get this back into a readable shape.
Oh, and if you're a fan of audiobooks (which I certainly am), Sarah Vowell's books are read predominantly by the author, with various bits voiced by a troupe of more or less well-known guest narrators (Patton Oswalt did several bits in Lafayette in the Somewhat United States).
