By CAITLIN E. CURRAN | October 9, 2008 Sarah Vowell’s fifth book, The Wordy Shipmates (Riverhead) examines New England Puritans with a meticulously researched, critical-yet-comical eye. Included is a discussion of the Thanksgiving story, neatly condensed into a 30-minute tale and told via the shiny sitcom filter of shows like The Brady Bunch (which was “full of factual holes,” Vowell writes) and Happy Days. This past year, when Vowell read this excerpt on a Thanksgiving-themed edition of Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life, host Ira Glass introduced it with the question: “What happens when comedies decide to take on the rather serious history of the United States of America? How do they do?” Vowell, it turns out, does well. In The Wordy Shipmates, she travels to such historical sites as Plimoth Plantation, and wades...
[read full story]
Your Web Site
