86 books like The Times of Their Lives

Philbrick had me from his opening sentence: “We all want to know how it was in the beginning.” He makes a familiar history fresh, asking how fifty years of peace at Plymouth Rock between the Mayflower Pilgrims and local Wampanoags could end in war.

Within this overarching theme, it’s the small details I remember, such as how Philbrick interviewed Captain Alan Villiers who sailed a 1957 replica of the Mayflower. In a violent transatlantic storm, Villiers tested a Jacobean sailing technique that hadn’t been tried for centuries, furling the sails and securing the helm into the wind. Its boxy shape kept Mayflower II perfectly balanced, bobbing upright in the gale. With accounts like this, I felt Philbrick had done his research and gave real credibility to his description of the voyage and its aftermath.

Reverend Roger Williams learned the local Algonquin language and wrote a book about it to teach Puritan settlers to respect the natives and their culture. The authorities threatened to ship him back to England, but he escaped south to the land of the Narragansetts, where he set up the colony that became Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. There he allowed religious freedom—even the despised Quakers and Catholics. He attempted a complete separation of church and state and preached on respecting native land rights. He sided with the Narragansetts when King Philip’s War broke out in 1675, a long and bloody battle throughout New England, in which two of my ancestors were killed by Indians, while two others enriched themselves. Roger William’s dream was of an America that could have been.

This title caught my attention because we usually associate slavery with the American south. But the Puritans brought many indentured laborers from England to help build their settlements and operate their farms and businesses. When these white men worked their way to freedom, the settlers turned to indenturing Native Americans, and enslaving captives of warfare, selling some of them for goods and African slaves from the Caribbean. (I found a reference in this book that my ancestor, Dr. Mathew Fuller, participated in this trade during King Philip’s War.) Newell’s book, full of primary sources, gives excellent background on, and understanding of, the founding of New England’s culture, economy, and legal framework. Those alien ideas didn’t go so well for the original inhabitants as white settlers pushed westward. 

I read this book because Salem was founded by another ancestor of mine, Roger Conant. He first settled in Plymouth but could not abide the Pilgrims’ fanatical creed. He was a Puritan but not a religious separatist. Most Puritans had dreams of reforming the Church of England, starting in America. Fortunately, Conant died before the Salem Witch Trials began, for he would have been shocked at these developments. (Unfortunately for him, the town stuck his statue in front of the Witch Museum.) Frances Hill’s book is a blow-by-blow account of how the hysteria of some adolescent girls captured the minds of Massachusetts’ residents, including educated people, causing the death of 20 innocent people. It is also a study of Puritan culture, as it went more and more “off the rails.”

With an introduction by Samuel Eliot Morison, this is the definitive edition of an American classic. In it, the printed text of Bradford’s remarkable history of the colony that he governed for many years is compared with the original manuscript, presenting his text in a contemporary, readable form. This wonderful story of the early years of the colony told in Bradford’s own words and illuminated with his personality is a must-read for anyone interested in colonial Plymouth. 

Children of the 17th and 18th centuries were raised far more strictly than today. In the 17th century, initially without schools, they would likely be uneducated. Encouraged to walk as soon as possible, children would be incorporated into the work of the family at an early age, to ensure the survival of the community. Alice Morse Earl conducted years of research, based on letters, official records, diaries, and other accounts to create and detailed portrait of a child’s world of that time. For me, it answered questions, such as: Did the children work? How were they educated? How did parents teach respect, manners, and religion? How were children disciplined? Were children allowed to play and what toys or games did they have? I found her book to be enormously helpful in creating the life of Mary Allerton as a child in the Plymouth Colony and the home life of the… show more.

Former Historian General of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, Stratton writes a complete treatment of the history and genealogy of the Plymouth Colony. While the book contains verbatim transcriptions of important documents and an annotated bibliography, which are manna to the writer of historical fiction, it also has informative chapters on law and order, inheritance, morality and sex, everyday life and manners, freemen and servants, and the diaspora of Pilgrim families to other towns in the colony. Thus, along with other books listed here, the research done by the author helped me to create the real world of the Plymouth Colony and allowed me to reinforce the concept that the Pilgrims were not so different from their millions of descendants four centuries later.

If you want to learn about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony, the most essential source is Mayflower passenger and longtime governor William Bradford’s own history. Bradford explains the circumstances that led a portion of his congregation to transplant themselves to the New World, then goes year by year through the colony’s first three decades. His annals aren’t dry, though. Bradford also has a wicked sense of humor. If would-be colonists weren’t tough enough for what awaited them in New England, they should remain across the Atlantic “till at least they be mosquito proof.” You shouldn’t only read Bradford. He’s a partisan in this contentious history, after all. But you shouldn’t pass on one of the great works of seventeenth-century American non-fiction.

Simply put: this book is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read.

PJ is a world-renowned artist who turned his hand to writing with this period piece, set aboard the famous ship bound for the new world. I had the enormous privilege of visiting PJ’s studio in Dublin several years ago and fell in love with his artwork on the spot.

In a world of flashy, computer-rendered illustrations, PJ’s style is timelessly beautiful.

The simplicity of the story, paired with the epic scope of his artwork makes this book a constant pleasure to revisit over and over again.

Most people knows that the Pilgrims were religious, but most Americans today know very little about the beliefs and practices that animated the separatists who chose to leave England and the Dutch Republic and cross the ocean. Francis Bremer is the best possible guide to this essential part of the Pilgrim story. Bremer knows puritanism better than anyone, and he knows how to fit the Pilgrims into that larger framework. In One Small Candle (the title comes from William Bradford’s history), Bremer explains how the lay leadership of men and women was central to separatism and to the religious organization of the colony.