Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (Paperback) traces the history of the first English colonies in New England, starting with the arrival of the Mayflower and the founding of Plymouth. Since most of the action occurs in my home turf, it’s fascinating to see how deep the roots of some of the towns in the area reach into American history.

Even if you aren’t a New Englander, you’ll appreciate how the seeds of what made American history such a unique mix of European and Native American culture first sprouted here in the tenuous first encounters between two groups of people who couldn’t have more different backgrounds, yet shared so many common interests. Perhaps that’s why they ended up fighting one of the most destructive wars in written American history, King Philip’s War.

This book is a very specific and focused follow up to the period of American history covered in 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Paperback), by Charles C. Mann, describes the history of the Americas before the European’s arrival dramatically altered the population and environment. This book explores in detail how the Americas were not virgin wilderness, untrammeled by all but a handful of nomadic primitive tribes, but a teeming land filled with advanced civilizations that had imposed significant alterations on the ecosystem to support their sophisticated societies

The Castle in the Forest

Norman Mailer’s last book, The Castle in the Forest, released before his death this year, is a portrait of the young Adolf Hitler and his family, told from a most unusual perspective: the demon who is assigned to cultivate Hitler as a “client.” Lots to think about in this book: the battle of good and evil, religion, and the scary parallels between modern events and the horrible conflicts of the last century.

The Savage Wars of Peace

In the book The Savage Wars Of Peace: Small Wars And The Rise Of American Power , Max Boot traces the US use of small expiditionary forces to influence foreign policy, starting from the Barbary Pirate wars to current activities in the middle east. Although he is an unabashed champion of the application of American imperial power, he does note the many ways that we’ve forgotten the value of small-unit counterinsurgency warfare — and this was written before Iraq turned into a quagmire. Of interest to Cpt. JM, perhaps.

Posted on December 14, 2007 1:03 AM