The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Foreword Book of the Year Award Finalist
The Pilgrims’ celebration of the first Thanksgiving is a keystone of America’s national and spiritual identity. But is what we’ve been taught about them or their harvest feast what actually happened? And if not, what difference does it make?
Through the captivating story of the birth of this quintessentially American holiday, veteran historian Tracy McKenzie helps us to better understand the tale of America’s origins―and for Christians, to grasp the significance of this story and those like it. McKenzie avoids both idolizing and demonizing the Pilgrims, and calls us to love and learn from our flawed yet fascinating forebears.
The First Thanksgiving is narrative history at its best, and promises to be an indispensable guide to the interplay of historical thinking and Christian reflection on the meaning of the past for the present.
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- Calls readers to love and learn from our forebears
- Helps Christians to grasp the significance of the Thanksgiving story
- Represents an indispensable guide to the interplay of historical thinking and Christian reflection
- Looking Underneath the House: The Evidence the Pilgrims Left Us
- Remembering Odbody’s Axiom: The Pilgrims? Historical Contexts
- Pursuing Authentic Education: Thinking About What the Pilgrims Wanted
- Finding Heroes, Not Idols: Following the Pilgrims to America
- Seeing Rhinos, Not Unicorns: The Strangeness of the Pilgrims
- Discarding False Memories: The Real Story of the First Thanksgiving
- Understanding Revisionism: How the First Thanksgiving Has Changed over Time
- Receiving Gifts from the Past: The Search for Larger Meaning
McKenzie’s book is both an engaging account of New England’s first Thanksgiving and an excellent introduction to how to think both critically and constructively about history.
—George Marsden, author of A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards
If you want to rediscover the ‘first Thanksgiving’ and learn what difference studying history makes--well, you couldn’t do better than reading this one volume. By looking at the Pilgrims afresh, they come alive to remind us ‘how we mean to live and do not yet live.’
—Mark Galli, Christianity Today
Tracy McKenzie’s clearly written and thoughtfully accessible book should be read with appreciation by a wide audience. It combines solid historical treatment of early American Thanksgivings with a perceptive understanding of historical method in general, and it does so by underscoring the profound Christian stake in history. It is one of those rare books that is perfectly suited for young readers but also of real value to those of us who have been around for a long time.
—Mark A. Noll, University of Notre Dame
- Title: The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History
- Author: Robert Tracy McKenzie
- Publisher: IVP USA
- Print Publication Date: 2013
- Logos Release Date: 2013
- Pages: 235
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9780830825745, 0830825746
- Resource ID: LLS:9780830895663
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-10-15T19:50:30Z
Robert Tracy McKenzie (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is Arthur F. Holmes Chair of Faith and Learning and professor and chair of the department of history at Wheaton College. His books include Lincolnites and Rebels, A Little Book for New Historians, and The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History.