The account of the Pilgrims’ stay in Holland is good, as is that of the struggle to survive in New Plymouth. As he says at the end, “Calvinist zeal was far more important than any other single factor in bringing about the creation of New England.” Portraits of two lesser-known figures, Robert (“Troublechurch”) Browne and the preacher John Preston, are especially useful.

This shower-of-information approach is more pertinent to the central issue of religion because it helps explain the Pilgrim mind-set. Talk about the carbuncle on Karl Marx’s neck and the worldwide communist conspiracy! The author graphically describes an autopsy done on King James, all to show that “the language of ill health supplied a rationale for banishment and exile” - i.e., kidney stones, arthritis and other maladies led to theoretical justification for religious tyranny. It certainly is not a charge that can be laid at his door, though he might have made his case without explaining the anatomy of the beaver or the process of making hats. Bunker chides earlier historians for paying attention “only in passing” to the importance of the trade in beaver skins. Tangential matters and events are gone into in needless and wearisome detail.

Wise committee members see this for what it is.ĭo you want to know how many ships left the Thames for Virginia in 1619? Or the names of the ships the Mayflower may (or may not) have passed? Or what it cost per day to keep the recently built lighthouse on the Lizard Peninsula operating? Look no further. candidate has dumped all his scavenged facts, regardless of their relevance, to impress a doctoral committee that he did a lot of hard work. “Making Haste From Babylon” resembles nothing so much as a dissertation into which the Ph.D. Too much frame, not enough picture.īunker, a former British investment banker and journalist, apparently has never met a fact he didn’t like. By the end of the book the reader is left to conclude that it would not have been a great loss if much of the material remained neglected. Nick Bunker says his “Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World” is “A New History” in two ways: It draws on a wealth of neglected primary sources on “the old side of the ocean” and it puts the Pilgrims “within their true setting, in all its Jacobean density.”ĭensity is the operative word. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu

Making haste from babylon review