For generations the Jews of Plymouth found a safe haven from the pogroms of Europe, a city where they could settle and prosper without any fear of intolerance or religious persecution. This is the first fully illustrated history of the Jews of Plymouth, a history in which the community has made a ling and distinguished contribution to the city's naval and city life.

Many visitors flock to Plymouth, Massachusetts, each year to view the historic landing spot of the Pilgrims. Three blocks from Plymouth Rock is Congregation Beth Jacob's synagogue. For more than a century, the Jewish community of this coastal New England town has flourished. Even before the establishment of the synagogue, built in 1912-13, Plymouth's history was shaped by the Jewish culture. Many colonial New England laws were derived from the Old Testament. The grave marker of famed Governor William Bradford bears an inscription in Hebrew that reads, "The Lord is the help of my life." Historian Karin J. Goldstein reveals the lasting impact of the Jewish community on Plymouth's history and the ways in which it still informs the town's unique identity today.

As the second oldest extant synagogue outside London, Exeter Synagogue has a rich history that stretches back to the early 18th century. This illustrated history focuses on the personalities and figures who shaped the community and kept the beautiful Georgian synagogue going through difficult eras as well as times of expansion and renewal.

The definitive study of the once-important Jewish communities of Devon and Cornwall, providing an in-depth study of the demography and economic activity as well as the political, cultural, religious and social life of South-Western Jewry.

At the end of 1618, a blazing green star soared across the night sky over the northern hemisphere. From the Philippines to the Arctic, the comet became a sensation and a symbol, a warning of doom or a promise of salvation. Two years later, as the Pilgrims prepared to sail across the Atlantic on board the Mayflower, the atmosphere remained charged with fear and expectation. Men and women readied themselves for war, pestilence, or divine retribution. Against this background, and amid deep economic depression, the Pilgrims conceived their enterprise of exile. Within a decade, despite crisis and catastrophe, they built a thriving settlement at New Plymouth, based on beaver fur, corn, and cattle. In doing so, they laid the foundations for Massachusetts, New England, and a new nation. Using a wealth of new evidence from landscape, archaeology, and hundreds of overlooked or neglected documents, Nick Bunker gives a vivid and strikingly original account of the Mayflower project and the first decade of the Plymouth Colony. From mercantile London and the rural England of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I to the mountains and rivers of Maine, he weaves a rich narrative that combines religion, politics, money, science, and the sea. The Pilgrims were entrepreneurs as well as evangelicals, political radicals as well as Christian idealists. Making Haste from Babylon tells their story in unrivaled depth, from their roots in religious conflict and village strife at home to their final creation of a permanent foothold in America.