The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World

In stunning prose, Nathaniel Philbrick evokes the drama of the voyage of the Mayflower and the eerie emptiness of coastal Massachusetts that greeted the Pilgrims. He tells how the settlers were able to gain the friendship of many powerful Native American leaders, including the charismatic Massasoit, and how they worked together to maintain peace. But the promise of the First Thanksgiving was broken with the next generation of leaders. Fifty-six years after the Mayflower's landing, a horrifying conflict, known today as King Philip's war, nearly wiped out the colonists and Natives alike, and forever altered the new country.