Hello! I’m Tito Aznar for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club’s 2025 Spring Read. Most of us have learned about the Pilgrims and the Puritans in a history class or in a literature class. Some of us may have learned about them through movies and TV shows–these people dressed in black and white, with big hats embellished with large buckles. For some of us–maybe for most of us–these people who came to America in the first half of the 17th century were stern, deeply religious, and hard to please. However, they were so much more than all that.
In The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell gives us a history lesson on the Pilgrims and Puritans. However, her book is not the average history book. Unlike the dry, textbook-like writing that would walk us through the Puritans’ journey to the New World, Vowell approaches her subject–the Puritans who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s–with wit, insight, and a sharp eye for these people’s humanity. She doesn’t merely give us the facts. She invites us to think, chuckle, cringe, and even sympathize with these complex historical figures. The Wordy Shipmates paints the Puritans as real people with all the contradictions and quirks we all have. Vowell dismantles stereotypes by showing us how intelligent, vibrant, and even infuriatingly self-righteous they were.
One central point in the book is that the Puritans were driven by ideas–big, messy, complicated ideas about God, community, and individual responsibility. Vowell delves into the writings of John Winthrop, especially his famous “City Upon a Hill” sermon, to illustrate their vision of creating a model society. To the Puritans, life wasn’t just about surviving harsh winters or avoiding starvation. It was about building a community that reflected their understanding of God’s will. They were idealists, and like many idealists, they were often impractical, overly ambitious, and blind to their own hypocrisies.
Let’s take Winthrop himself, for example. Vowell doesn’t shy away from showing his contradictions. On the one hand, he preached about the importance of charity, unity, and selflessness, and he urged his fellow colonists to support each other. On the other hand, he was authoritarian, willing to suppress disagreement when it threatened his vision. Through Vowell’s lens, Winthrop isn’t just a figurehead of Puritanism; he’s a flawed, fascinating human being trying to balance his ideals with the messy realities of governance.
Then we have Roger Williams, the rebel who refused to conform to Winthrop’s vision and ended up being banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and went on to found Rhode Island. Vowell clearly admires Williams for his commitment to religious freedom and separation of church and state, but she doesn’t present him as a saint either. He was exhaustingly stubborn, so convinced of his own righteousness that he alienated almost everyone around him. Vowell’s depiction of Williams highlights a broader theme in her book: the tension between community and individuality, between unity and freedom.
One thing that makes The Wordy Shipmates especially engaging is the author’s ability to establish connections between the world of the Puritans and our own. She points out how their debates about governance, morality, and community still resonate today. For instance, their concept of being a “city upon a hill” has been invoked countless times in American political rhetoric, often stripped of its original context. Vowell invites us to think critically about how we use and misuse history, showing how the Puritans’ legacy is both inspiring and troubling.
By the end of the book, we might not love the Puritans. In fact, we might find them exasperating, hypocritical, or just plain weird. But we’ll certainly understand them better. Vowell doesn’t ask us to romanticize or condemn them; she asks us to see them as they were: flawed, complicated, and deeply human. I’m Tito Aznar for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club.