The Wordy Shipmates is pretty true to Sarah Vowell form: chatty historical memoir.  Her style in this book reminds me of the particularly engaging 10th grade American history teacher I had in 1998: lots of enthusiasm, lots of primary texts, a few personal anecdotes and musings thrown in for good measure.  She focuses on one historical point in this book, telling us all about the first American Puritans and how they got this great experiment started.  Winthrop, Williams, and Cotton are well-developed characters and Vowell teases out how their ideas continue to influence us today really well redeeming the Puritans […]