It's a pleasant coincidence that ex-Pittsburgher Nathaniel Philbrick returns to the city Thanksgiving week.

"Mayflower," his best-selling 2006 account of the Pilgrims and their struggle to survive long enough to hold that first feast, will be the centerpiece of his appearance tomorrow night at the Drue Heinz Lectures.

Don't expect him to show up in a ruffled collar waving a turkey drumstick, however. Philbrick understands that the image of a bountiful meal shared with the natives is largely a myth, as is Plymouth Rock, Washington and the cherry tree, and even Cooperstown as baseball's birthplace.

While these myths are not real history, they play key roles in how Americans view their nation, he believes.

"I wrote 'Mayflower' in the wake of 9/11 and our invasion of Iraq. It was a time of real danger and fear. Emotions played a large part at that time, just as they did in Pilgrim times," he said last week.

"I believe people need an emotional connection to history to make it relevant to them," Philbrick added. "People are just waiting for insights and understandings that they can relate to themselves to the world they're in today, and that's how I approach writing history."

The founding director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies in Nantucket, Mass., Philbrick, 51, grew up in the city's East End and graduated from Allderdice High School. His first book, "In the Heart of the Sea," distinguished him as a historian of the sea, but he qualifies that label.

"I was an English major, not a trained historian," he said. "I'm a journalist who writes about history."

As heroic, yet murky as the first days of the English settlement at Plymouth were, it took the skills of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to transform them into legend through his epic poem, "The Courtship of Miles Standish."

"Every generation has to return to history and rediscover what's important to them," Philbrick said. "In Longfellow's time there were things like Civil War tearing America in two warring factions and the Indian wars of the West, and out of it came 'The Courtship of Miles Standish.'

"Miles Standish was portrayed as a heroic Indian fighter. Along with things like the first Thanksgiving and Plymouth Rock, Longfellow provided touchstones of solidarity in the face of great sacrifice and danger."

Longfellow's best-known works became an unofficial history of early America and were staples in the nation's classrooms for years.

"His poems had such emotional power that for 100 years, schoolchildren were using them as entry points into history," Philbrick said.

"Of course there were distortions in them, but the point is, they were relevant to the people of his times and future times. It's up to people writing about history today to connect to the past in a way that makes it as relevant to our time as now."Nathaniel Philbrick

• When: Tomorrow, 7:30 p.m., Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland.

• Tickets: 412-622-8866.

First Published: November 18, 2007, 10:00 a.m.