The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell
I’ve actually listened to this twice—once when it first came out, and then again when my book club picked it.
Both times, I enjoyed it. Vowell reads the audiobook herself, and I love the way she delivers lines.
One of the biggest problems I had with the book was that it was hard to keep track of the people, even though I minored in history and still read history and had heard of most of the people she was talking about. Probably this was a problem because I was listening rather than reading.
The other problem I had was that it felt too short, somehow, like it was just getting good and then it was over. I wanted more information about Williams and Hutchinson, especially. Of course, some of my fellow book clubbers didn’t like the book enough to finish it, so perhaps for them it was too long.
I liked it. I liked the focus on how intellectual the early settlers were, and how each of the people Vowell describes had their own firm beliefs, which were actually quite different from each other (and occasionally rather internally inconsistent, especially with regard to the indigenous people). I think Vowell did a good job of picking apart the settlers’ fussiness about God and laws, state vs. religion, and showing how it still affects us now. Plus, funny.