Carla Gardina Pestana is Professor of History and Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of America in the World at the University of California, Los Angeles. A Guggenheim Fellow, she is author of The English Conquest of Jamaica: Oliver Cromwell’s Bid for Empire and The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661.
Thanksgiving, Squanto, the Mayflower, and its compact—we all know
the Pilgrims’ story, or we think we do. In this succinct, elegantly
written book, Pestana introduces readers to the reality behind the
myth. The World of Plymouth Plantation is about mothers as well as
fathers, about a place where Native Americans were sometimes but
not always friends, and where the rest of the world was never far
away.
*Eliga H. Gould, author of Among the Powers of the
Earth*
Pestana has solved the conundrum of how to write about the Pilgrims
and Plymouth. Employing a variety of inventive lenses, she treats
Plymouth Plantation as a colony among colonies, interconnected with
other ventures and with all kinds of Atlantic enterprises. The
World of Plymouth Plantation is a model of how to write history and
a must-read for anyone interested in early America.
*Karen Ordahl Kupperman, author of The Jamestown
Project*
Four centuries on, Plymouth Colony still fascinates those in search
of origin stories for the United States. For better or worse,
patterns of English–Native relations, of religious zeal, of
political democracy, and perhaps even of national independence all
have been traced to a small band of seemingly extraordinary
migrants who debarked in 1620. Yet, in this concise but learned
book, Pestana shows just how ordinary those migrants were in the
broader Atlantic context of the seventeenth century. That very
ordinariness makes Plymouth matter more, rather than less, for our
understanding of the nation’s past.
*Daniel K. Richter, author of Before the Revolution*
The story we all thought we knew is, in Pestana’s expert hands,
transformed. Based on her meticulous excavation and skillful
interpretation of the records generated by early settlers, The
World of Plymouth Plantation takes us beyond the Mayflower, the
rock, and the shared meal with natives to a place where real people
lived and worked, experienced joy and sorrow, and connected with
the world beyond the colony.
*Sharon V. Salinger, author of Taverns and Drinking in Early
America*
In this compulsively readable book, Pestana breathes new life into
Plymouth Plantation, too often imagined as an isolated and static
place frozen in time. She demonstrates that the English men and
women who occupied Plymouth lived in a complex world that defied
Pilgrim stereotypes. Addressing topics that range from God and
gender to guns and stockings, Pestana demonstrates that Plymouth,
far from being an isolated incubator of American values, was
embedded in transatlantic networks and entangled in complex webs of
meaning all its own.
*Eric Hinderaker, author of Boston’s Massacre*
Illuminating…Adds depth to many founding legends of American
culture…Pestana brings the early decades of the colony to rich and
nuanced life.
*Publishers Weekly*
Explores Plymouth’s grip on the American historical
imagination.
*Smithsonian*
An impressive achievement…There’s virtually no tidbit that Pestana
overlooks; giving fresh exposure to such details in different
settings exposes a more complex, more alien, yet more recognizable
Plymouth than many of us have seen before…Succinctly and ably does
so much to shake up, refresh, and reengage a realer Plymouth
Plantation…It is especially welcome during this quadricentenary
observance of the Mayflower arrival.
*American Literary History*
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