The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell

You may wonder why I chose to read a historical account of the Puritans. If so, that's because you aren't familiar with Sarah Vowell. I became aware of her through NPR's This American Life and her Daily Show appearances. (You may also know her as the voice of Violet in The Incredibles.) She is that best possible combination--a hilarious nerd. As much as I like her, I figured it was time I read one of her books.

Also, though the Puritans are not my favorite people, I do have to give them a lot of thought each semester. Between actual Puritan literature (Anne Bradstreet, Jonathan Edwards), Nathaniel Hawthorne, and The Crucible, I end up spending quite a bit of time thinking and talking about this grim bunch. It certainly couldn't hurt me to get to know more about them.

I'm only halfway through the book now, but I'm really enjoying it. I actually laughed out loud at several parts of it, like her description of a speech by Puritan minister John Cotton:

"He begins with one of the loveliest passages from the book of Second Samuel, an otherwise R-rated chronicle of King David's serial-killer years. [There's a nice verse about the people of Israel finding a home.] Sounds so homey, like that column in the real estate section of The New York Times about how people found their apartments. Until I remember that talk like this is the match still lighting the fuses of a thousand car bombs" (Vowell 2).

That's what I like about Sarah Vowell. She's funny but also incredibly insightful. I already feel more knowledgeable--and more prepared to teach students about the Puritans--than when I started the book. I have a much better grasp on the concept of predestination than I did before. In the past, when my students started asking too many questions about that, I flailed a bit. No more!

And even if the rest of the book were crap--which it most emphatically is not--I would love it to pieces anyway for this:

"So the colonists dispersed south, breaking off into various settlements such as Roxbury and Dorchester, Boston neighborhoods famous in the twentieth century for race riots and the boy band New Kids on the Block" (Vowell 89).

An NKOTB shout-out? Vowell can do no wrong.