Forget everything you think you know about the Pilgrims. Their story of sailing to New England aboard the Mayflower to escape religious persecution looms so large in the American consciousness, it’s a sort of myth—and historian Nathaniel Philbrick is here to bust it. In his eye-opening book, Philbrick uses meticulous research to separate fact from fiction. We were gobsmacked to learn that the first Thanksgiving wasn’t just about the Pilgrims being hungry and desperate for help from the Native Americans, it was also about them shrewdly allying themselves with the area’s most powerful tribe. In fact, Philbrick explodes the entire accepted narrative that the colonists were just a humble people looking for religious freedom, going in depth on the treacherous war the Puritans waged against the region’s indigenous peoples for two generations. Drawing on copious primary sources like letters and diaries, Mayflower strips away any idealized notions we had about the Pilgrims, and that’s okay. The truth, as it turns out, is even more impactful.