Philbrick is an engrossing history writer who understands that good history isn’t about the recitation of dates and names, but rather the story which falls in between. Mayflower had me hooked. Given the approach of Thanksgiving, this seasonally appropriate book brings you inside the cramped ship which brought our Pilgrim forebears to the shores of New England, then charts the course of the colony they created, terminating decades later with the great bloodletting that was King Philip’s War.