This book may be a prime source for future historians looking to see what life was like during the early days of the Free State Project.

Like the letters between Jefferson and Madison during the Revolution, New Pilgrims Chronicles offers insight to the inner thoughts of pioneers in freedom. Also like those old letters, the book has a human feel to it, making you realize that it was written by a real person, with human feelings, desires, doubts and hope.

The Free State Project could lead to the largest politically motived movement of masses in nearly 150 years. If that is the case, this book will prove to be first-hand evidence of the thoughts of these people in our own time.

NEW PILGRIM CHRONICLES
Reviewed by Therese Hercher

A Roads Scholar Embarks

This week’s Time Magazine article about the Free State Project coincides so fortuitously with the recent release of author Brian Wright’s New Pilgrim Chronicles that I’m wondering: when’s the movie coming out?

New Pilgrim Chronicles blends travel-guide entertainment with a philosophical clarion-call to all who want to live free and unfettered in low-tax New Hampshire. It details the author's embarkation on a deliberate life among people devoted to liberty and grounded in the sacred nonaggression principle.

Writing in picaresque prose, with folksy and candid observations (and occasional over-the-top irreverence), Brian Wright shares roadside reflections as he leaves his former home for “the Promised Land of exceptional high quality living for real people.”

New Pilgrim Chronicles is must-reading for those considering a Free State Project move. But even armchair tourists, or travelers traditionally interested only in knowing “Are we there yet?” will enjoy its pragmatic scenarios and provocative thinking.

November 11, 2006

I picked up New Pilgrim Chronicles from a friend who suggested it made a pretty good pitch for moving to the Free State of New Hampshire. Well, it certainly does do that: the author writes in a very connected, personal fashion and seemed to be speaking directly to me as if I were sitting across from him in a coffee shop. He isn’t so much a salesman for the Free State as he is a “gonzo” journalist who likes to share the experience of being in the middle of a newsworthy event… not just covering it as a reporter for a newspaper. You feel he truly cares.
But on top of the “come home to New Hampshire” message—or perhaps I should say, in the middle of it—Wright provides a deeper insight of what the freedom movement is all about, or should be about. He describes the current central American government system and its deceptive, warmaking machinery(which is killing everybody)and the need to think for ourselves, as opposed to accepting what we’re told on blind faith. Finally, he shares information about promising new technologies that will make people healthier and help us live longer, and shows how the political successes already happening in the Free State will spread to the rest of the world. What a warm, upbeat book; I read it in one sitting.