Pilgrim voices tell of more than first Thanksgiving

The typical “first Thanksgiving” story covers only a small, brief portion of the Pilgrims' experiences over a span of decades. Telling their tale far more fully — and largely in their own words — is award-winning historian Rod Gragg in his new book, “The Pilgrim Chronicles: An Eyewitness History of the Pilgrims and the Founding of Plymouth Colony” (Regnery History).

The author's narrative combines with the book's abundant illustrations and quotations from memoirs, letters and personal accounts, many of them never published before. The result is well rounded and detailed, bringing home just how much the Pilgrims endured in search of religious freedom — a quest that would cost many of them their lives.

Known at home in Great Britain as Puritan Separatists, they rejected the Church of England as too worldly. And though they “threatened no violence against the queen,” unlike Catholics who also dissented against the state church, they still were subject to imprisonment, exile, even death for failing to worship in the Church of England.

They first sought refuge in Holland, which had no such religious restrictions. English law called for the Puritans' exile but also forbade emigration by religious nonconformists, which meant many setbacks and much oppression before the Puritans finally managed to reach the Netherlands. But worries about corrupting influences there led them to set their sights on the New World.

Their Atlantic Ocean crossing aboard the Mayflower was no pleasure cruise and their new home was harsh. Eyewitness accounts of half the Pilgrims dying during Plymouth Colony's first winter make vivid and immediate the deprivation and disease mentioned in passing in most “first Thanksgiving” stories.

“The Pilgrim Chronicles” also carries the tale of Plymouth Colony far beyond the occasion that Americans again will celebrate this Thursday. The book provides even more reasons to be grateful for the Pilgrims — and for their key role in American religious freedom.

A ‘ROCKY' LIFE

“On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller” by Richard Norton Smith (Random House) — When this new biography's subject lost the Republican presidential nomination to conservative Barry Goldwater at the 1964 convention, the party began a move to the right that continues today — and the liberal East Coast Republicanism that Nelson Rockefeller exemplified began heading toward extinction. Drawing on more than 200 interviews and thousands of newly available documents including previously unpublished writings by Rockefeller, the author, a 1983 Pulitzer Prize finalist who has written books about Thomas E. Dewey, Herbert Hoover and George Washington, aims to provide the definitive account of Rockefeller's life. The product of 14 years' work, the book covers his time as New York's governor and U.S. vice president, his presidential runs, his divorce and remarriage, and the severe dyslexia and extramarital affairs he largely kept hidden from the public during his lifetime.

JAILER'S VIEW

“Mandela: My Prisoner, My Friend” by Christo Brand with Barbara Jones (Thomas Dunne Books) — Whatever readers think of Nelson Mandela, they should find the lead author's rare perspective of interest. A white Afrikaner raised in a multi-ethnic farming community, he was conscripted into South Africa's military. Choosing to serve as a prison guard, he was assigned, at age 19, to guard Mandela, then 60, at the maximum-security Robben Island prison. Inevitably bound up with apartheid and Mandela's role in ending it, the book deals more with how the two men's shared humanity developed into friendship. While keeping to the official line with his superiors, the author did what he could to ease Mandela's burdens behind bars, mostly in small ways. He also recounts how Mandela was devoted to the prison's garden, discouraged rebellion among young radical inmates and shared seafood that prisoners gathered and cooked with his captors.

IN THE PIPELINE

Forthcoming titles from both ends of the political spectrum:

Conservative

• “Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West's Past” by John M. Owen (Princeton University Press, available today)

• “The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014, Second Edition” by Malcolm W. Nance (CRC Press, Dec. 11)

• “Crossing Heaven's Border” by Hark Joon Lee (Asia-Pacific Research Center, Dec. 31)

• “Obama's Time: A History” by Morton Keller (Oxford University Press, Jan. 2)

• “Lincoln and Liberty: Wisdom for the Ages” edited by Lucas E. Morel, introduction by Clarence Thomas (The University Press of Kentucky, Jan. 2)

Liberal

• “Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman” by Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich (Belknap Press, Monday)

• “Always on Strike: Frank Little and the Western Wobbles” by Arnold Stead (Haymarket Books, Dec. 9)

• “The Dialectics of State Capitalism: Writings on Marxist Theory, 1940-1956” by C.L.R. James, edited by Scott MeLemee (Haymarket Books, Dec. 16)

• “Year One of the Russian Revolution” by Victor Serge, translated by Peter Sedgwick (Haymarket Books, Dec. 30)

• “Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal” by Mumia Abu-Jamal, edited by Johanna Fernandez (City Lights Publishers, Jan. 6)

Alan Wallace is a Trib Total Media editorial page writer (412-320-7983 or awallace@tribweb.com).