Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 Book

Somewhere between an after-the-fact diary and a modern blog, these reminiscences of the long-time governor of the first major English settlement in Massachusetts is a fascinating read, not only for Bradford's own measured comments, but more particularly for his inclusion of the numerous letters among the various New World settlements and England. The letters remove his assertions from being one-sided comments by giving them the backing of the commentators' original words.
It was a tough, often harrowing life, especially for the first landers, who lost half their number to disease and privation. The "adventurers" back home, who financed the Puritans partly for religious reasons but more in the hope of profit, prove continually untrustworthy in word and deed – though god knows they suffered losses enough in the process.
To today's ear, the continual effusions over God's goodness might ring extreme, perhaps hollow, if confined to Bradford, but they round out every one of the letters from any correspondent. After a bit, I found myself ignoring the last two paragraphs of the letters with their perhaps heartfelt but still formulaic religiosity. Altogether, this history reflects a wholly different outlook on what life means, how it is lived and where it appears to be headed.
This edition, from 1920, has been modernized in language to some degree, but I didn't feel that that affected the meaning or the sense of time and place in the original.