Pilgrims and Puritans: 1620-1676

Drama of American History

De: James Lincoln Collier, Christopher Collier

Narrado por: Jim Manchester

In Pilgrims and Puritans, the authors begin in the year 1620 in England and end in New England in the year 1676. The book recounts the religious, political, and social history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its influence on our lives today. The narrative follows various groups of settlers from their departure from England through arrival in the New World and their often violent conflicts with the native peoples of the Americas. The authors examine a number of issues that arose in the new society that was founded and the rise and fall of the "city on a hill."

History is dramatic - and the renowned, award-winning authors Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier demonstrate this in the compelling Drama of American History series aimed at young readers. Covering American history from the founding of Jamestown through present day, these volumes explore far beyond the dates and events of a historical chronicle to present a moving illumination of the ideas, opinions, attitudes, and tribulations that led to the birth of this great nation.

©1997 Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier (P)2013 AudioGO

excellent brief history must read for everyone.

I really enjoyed this book excellent history lesson gives you much to think about in our current cultural climate

A Great Overview

This overview gives great insight for the period helping with a good understanding of more detailed events! This book is for everyone…not just kids.

We need a Puritan revival

This country is lost and we really need a reform back to our Christian roots. Listen and learn!

very well written!

reading these series helps me understand our country more intimately and I so appreciate it!

Honest and equal

An honest and equal recording of the Pilgrims and Puritans and the dealings with the Indians. A fair view of history.

Great for secondary students

This whole series of historical summaries of the American experience would make an excellent teaching tool for any social studies or civics class.

broad perspective

useful as relates to today ...traditions we may take for granted, traceable and fascinating, history more dynamic than fiction

Beginning America

Listening intently to the formations of the arrivals of Europeans impact, influence and demise of the indigenous peoples of the North American continent. Nods today of use of adopted systems.

A Sad Experiment

This is actually part of a series that is geared to younger readers of history and, instead of a chronological and dates/people focus, attempts to focus on periods, movements, and locations that were important to the overall progress of American history. This book focuses on a 56-year period of time between the Pilgrim’s landing at Plymouth Rock and King Philip's War that almost completely destroyed the last surviving Native Americans in the area of the Massachusetts colony. The native peoples never recovered and even the colonists were left shaken by how that war had been carried out. 

This was a crucial period in early American history since, despite most American’s belief that America was founded by people trying to escape religious persecution, this is actually the only colony that was founded on religious grounds. Other colonies were business ventures. And, probably most Americans don’t even realize that the Pilgrims and Puritans were quite distinct.

Both were of the English Calvinist bent but the Pilgrims were a small group in the hundreds who were truly trying to get away and set up a new Christian community from scratch without the interference from the king. They had first moved to the Netherlands but feared the bad influence that the more free-wheeling Dutch would have onl their children. They scraped together funds and also had some investors behind them but were on a shoestring budget with little planning and strategy, which is why one of their ships had to turn back and eventually give up the voyage due to recurring leaks and why they arrived in the middle of the winter. Their land grant was actually further south in the area of Virginia but they missed it by a significant amount when they landed on Cape Cod. They wanted to set up a more pure life for themselves, but didn’t demand the same purity of others and in fact some of their party were not there for religious reasons at all, such as their Captain, the famous Miles Standish. They were common folk, tradesmen and farmers. The Puritans were different. They were, for the most part, highly educated and valued education. Most had been educated at Cambridge which is why they named of one their towns Cambridge and founded their school there, the present day Harvard University. But, they were strict purists and intended to found a society without any taint of departure from the pure faith. And, they came over in much greater numbers, at least tens of thousands of immigrants over a few decades in very well-funded expeditions. The book spends more time discussing them and how they established their commonwealth, emphasized education, how they began to expand further which brought them further into conflict with the remaining Native Americans with increasing tensions and finally a great war called King Philip’s War (King Philip being a name taken up by the leader of one of the larger groupings of Native Americans) and finally how internal dissension and their inability to accept differing opinions lead to breakoff that established separate colonies in what is now Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire and finally the failure of the experiment but the legacy it left on America’s cultural history. 

All in all, this was a very simple and easy to understand summary of this part of our history and, for its target and the limits it set for itself, it does a good job. It’s suitable as a refresher for adults as well as youth.

Good educational material

Good for orthodox school education, start reading material, conforming to generally accepted teaching with some propaganda flavor