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b45c890
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Hope was all that stood between them and death.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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9ab8e10
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Melville's example demonstrates the wisdom of waiting to read the classics. Coming to a great book on your own after having accumulated essential life experience can make all the difference.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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fb2df36
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We interact with one another as individuals responding to a complex haze of factors: professional responsibilities, personal likes and dislikes, ambition, jealousy, self-interest, and, in at least some instances, genuine altruism. Living in the here and now, we are awash with sensations of the present, memories of the past, and expectations and fears for the future. Our actions are not determined by any one cause; they are the fulfillment o..
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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35a1471
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The moment any of them gave up on the difficult work of living with their neighbors--and all of the compromise, frustration, and delay that inevitably entailed--they risked losing everything.
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neighbors
working-together
compromise
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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877d5e4
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The sperm whales' network of female-based family unit resembled, to a remarkable extent, the community the whalemen had left back home on Nantucket. In both societies the males were itinerants. In their dedication to killing sperm whales the Nantucketers had developed a system of social relationships that mimicked those of their prey.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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6c284b4
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In the end, both sides wanted what the Pilgrims had been looking for in 1620: a place unfettered by obligations to others. But from the moment Massasoit decided to become the Pilgrims' ally, New England belonged to no single group. For peace and for survival, others must be accommodated. The moment any of them gave up on the difficult work of living with their neighbors--and all of the compromise, frustration, and delay that inevitably enta..
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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b992d7c
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No matter how much the inhabitants might try to hide it, there was a savagery about this island, a bloodlust and pride that bound every mother, father, and child in a clannish commitment to the hunt.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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4842885
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We all know the story: how a defiant and undisciplined collection of citizen soldiers banded together to defeat the mightiest army on earth. But as those who lived through the nearly decadelong saga of the American Revolution were well aware, that was not how it actually happened. The real Revolution was so troubling and strange that once the struggle was over, a generation did its best to remove all traces of the truth. No one wanted to re..
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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11e630b
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the greatest danger to America's future came from self-serving opportunism masquerading as patriotism. At
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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615538c
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The whaleman's rule of thumb was that, before diving, a whale blew once for each minute it would spend underwater. Whalemen also knew that while underwater the whale continued at the same speed and in the same direction as it had been traveling before the dive. Thus, an experienced whaleman could calculate with remarkable precision where a submerged whale was likely to reappear.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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d187563
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Living in the here and now, we are awash with sensations of the present, memories of the past, and expectations and fears for the future. Our actions are not determined by any one cause; they are the fulfillment of who we are at that particular moment. After that moment passes, we continue to evolve, to change, and our memories of that moment inevitably change with us as we live with the consequences of our past actions, consequences we wer..
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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92260ea
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Without the discovery of Arnold's treason in the fall of 1780, the american people might never have been forced to realize that the real threat to their liberties came not from without but from within.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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80de360
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at sea, things appear different.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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089abe4
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Faint heart never won fair lady," he wrote; "neither did it ever pursue and overtake an Indian village."
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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13be16d
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This meant that while the vast majority of the country's citizens stayed at home, the War for Independence was being waged, in large part, by newly arrived immigrants.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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dc4bd39
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Modern survival psychologists have determined that this "social"--as opposed to "authoritarian"--form of leadership is ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions must be made quickly and firmly. Only later, as the ordeal drags on and it is necessary to maintain morale, do social leadership skills become important."
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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116691f
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fluidity of the sea, not the rigidity of irresistible law, characterizes human conduct, especially in the midst of a calamity.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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5440ef8
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It is painful to witness the death of the smallest of God's created beings, much more, one in which life is so vigorously maintained as the Whale! And when I saw this, the largest and most terrible of all created animals bleeding, quivering, dying a victim to the cunning of man, my feelings were indeed peculiar!
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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5432e46
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Brown made a claim that possibly hit a little too close to home. 'Money is this man's god,' the handbill read, 'and to get enough of it, he would sacrifice his country.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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25dde1b
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The sperm whales' network of female-based family units resembled, to a remarkable extent, the community the whalemen had left back home on Nantucket. In both societies the males were itinerants. In their dedication to killing sperm whales the Nantucketers had developed a system of social relationships that mimicked those of their prey.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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9653c43
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Nickerson began to understand, as only an adolescent on the verge of adulthood can understand, that the carefree days of childhood were gone forever: "Then it was that I, for the first time, realized that I was alone upon a wide and an unfeeling world . . . without one relative or friend to bestow one kind word upon me."
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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5216d8e
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yield. In April, Bradford had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew. The change in attitude was stunning. Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before. In previous years, the men had tended the fields while the women tended the children at home. "The women now went willingly into the field," Bradford wrote, "an..
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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caa9146
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There was a saying on the island: "[I]t is a pity to spoil a good mate by making him a master."
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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d358344
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Odd things happen in a battle, and the human heart has strange and gruesome depths and the human brain still stranger shallows;
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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1b2bee5
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Custer wrote, "I often think I would greatly prefer to cast my lot among those of my people adhered to the free open plains rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation, there to be the recipient of the blessed benefits of civilization, with its vices thrown in without stint or measure."
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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64c54ab
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As Herman Melville wrote of that seagoing monster of a man Captain Ahab, "All mortal greatness is but disease."
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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47b0bb9
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When a group of frontiersmen camped on the middle fork of Elkhorn Creek heard about the militiamen's deaths in Massachusetts, they decided to name their outpost for the historic event. That is why what was then a part of Virginia is known today as Lexington, Kentucky.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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6b419aa
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This is also the story of two British generals. The first, Thomas Gage, was saddled with the impossible task of implementing his government's unnecessarily punitive response to the Boston Tea Party in December 1773.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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5139f7d
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No longer mindful of the debt they owed the Pokanokets, without whom their parents would never have endured their first year in America, some of the Pilgrims' children were less willing to treat Native leaders with the tolerance and respect their parents had once afforded Massasoit.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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7032a10
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A Puritan believed it was necessary to venture back to the absolute beginning of Christianity, before the church had been corrupted by centuries of laxity and abuse, to locate divine truth.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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8d55c90
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Warren had a most unusual household. A recent widower with four children between the ages of two and eight, he was not only a leading patriot but also had one of the busiest medical practices in Boston. He had two apprentices living with him on Hanover Street, and he sometimes saw as many as twenty patients a day. His practice ran the gamut, from little boys with broken bones, like John Quincy Adams, to prostitutes on aptly named Damnation ..
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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cfc7c60
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For all they had suffered during those first terrible winters in America, their best years were behind them, in Leiden. Never again would they know the same rapturous sense of divine fellowship that had first launched them on this quest.
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religion
puritans
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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7dae354
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During the forty-five months of World War II, the United States lost just under 1 percent of its adult male population; during the Civil War the casualty rate was somewhere between 4 and 5 percent; during the fourteen months of King Philip's War, Plymouth Colony lost close to 8 percent of its men. But the English losses appear almost inconsequential when compared to those of the Indians. Of a total Native population of approximately 20,000,..
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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49e5957
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Philip's local squabble with Plymouth Colony had mutated into a regionwide war that, on a percentage basis, had done nearly as much as the plagues of 1616-19 to decimate New England's Native population.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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ac20211
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By doing their best to destroy the Native people who had welcomed and sustained their forefathers, New Englanders had destroyed their forefathers' way of life.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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e45e22d
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The Pilgrims had come to America not to conquer a continent but to re-create their modest communities in Scrooby and in Leiden. When they arrived at Plymouth in December 1620 and found it emptied of people, it seemed as if God had given them exactly what they were looking for. But as they quickly discovered during that first terrifying fall and winter, New England was far from uninhabited. There were still plenty of Native people, and to ig..
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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8583f9c
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The future is never more important than to a people on the verge of a cataclysm.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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ab9ea80
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The Pilgrims' descendants have proven to be, if nothing else, fruitful. In 2002 it was estimated that there were approximately 35 million descendants of the Mayflower passengers in the United States, which represents roughly 10 percent of the total U.S. population.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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2d5c890
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In a letter to Benjamin Franklin he described how the explosion of the Augusta created a cloud like none other he had ever seen: "a thick smoke rising like a pillar and spreading from the top like a tree." It did not become the symbol of a new and terrible age of destruction for another 168 years, but in the fall of 1777 the skyline of Philadelphia was darkened by the shadow of the mushroom cloud." --
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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2dee691
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The United States had been created through an act of disloyalty. No matter how eloquently the Declaration of Independence had attempted to justify the American rebellion, a residual guilt hovered over the circumstances of the country's founding. Arnold changed all that. By threatening to destroy the newly created republic through, ironically, his own betrayal, Arnold gave this nation of traitors the greatest of gifts; a myth of creation. Th..
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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fa66f00
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To write timelessly about the here and now, a writer must approach the present indirectly. The story has to be about more than it at first seems. Shakespeare used the historical sources of his plays as a scaffolding on which to construct detailed portraits of his own age. The interstices between the secondhand historical plots and Shakespeare's startlingly original insights into Elizabethan England are what allow his work to speak to us tod..
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timeless
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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49a2bfa
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Thomas Paine was so inspired by the heroism displayed at Fort Mifflin that he published an open letter to William Howe: 'You are fighting for what you can never obtain and we are defending what we never mean to part with.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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092f290
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POLLARD had known better, but instead of pulling rank and insisting that his officers carry out his proposal to sail for the Society Islands, he embraced a more democratic style of command. Modern survival psychologists have determined that this "social"--as opposed to "authoritarian"--form of leadership is ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions must be made quickly and firmly. Only later, as the ordeal drags on and it..
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Nathaniel Philbrick |
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fffba2a
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Over the next hundred years, more gold would be extracted from a single mine in the Black Hills (an estimated $1 billion) than from any other mine in the continental United States.
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Nathaniel Philbrick |