Rating: 
Summary: Warning-Not really about King Philip's War
Review: Be warned, if you're looking for a history of King Philip's War then this is not the book for you. Instead what Lepore is investigating is the ways that colonial New Englanders conceived of the war and, by extension their identity. As part of the new wave of cultural history that is coming out of the universities this book represents what is great and frustrating about that movement. On one level the book is, at times, a great look at how early white New Englanders conceived of their identity, the lengths to which they would go to defend this identity, and the ways in which they would justify this defense. Like great cultural history it gives us a vivid peak into the minds of the people it studies, thereby giving us a better understanding of how they thought and lived. On the other hand the book is, at times, frustrating in that it contains elements of the worst aspects of post modern history. Lepore gets carried away sometimes and lets her study drift too far into the realms of philosophy or literary criticism. Two examples I think illustrate this trend. At one point Lepore spends several pages in a great examination of the contradiction that the colonists felt: on one hand they feared that proximity to the native Americans would turn them into savages, on the other hand if they moved to exterminate the natives then they would lose that quality of justice and mercy that defined them as Englishmen. After laying out this excurtiating argument Lepore tritely concludes that the solution to the problem was that the Colonists would wage a war against the natives and then write histories of it that would justify their actions. While this is undoubtedly what happened it doesn't pass muster as a historical solution to the colonists dillema. While it makes literary and, to some degree logical, sense to us the solution Lepore provides isn't one that a colonist genuinely in a moral quandry would use. The very cynicism of the strategem makes it a violation of the moral guidelines that the colonists saw themselves as possesing. Another example is in a description of a New Englander who visits the bones of King Philip on display and steals Philips jawbone. Lepore asks why he did that instead of some other act of defilement such as breaking the skull or spitting on it. Her conclusion is that the man stole the jaw in order to shut Philip up. Again, while this is an apt literary analysis, it seems dubious that the thief was motivated by a desire to symbolicly shut up the skull. It could just as easily be true that the man wanted a souvenir and that the jawbone was the most easily removed piece of the skull. History is not literature and while the new trend of postmodernism and cultural history can provide us with a lot of insight into the past authors must be careful to avoid the mistakes that Lepore makes in treating historical documents as PURELY literary works without any connection to real people or events. Still for these few flaws Lepore has produced an interesting and useful book. As a stand alone about King Philips war it is limited in it's usefullness but in conjunction with another book about the war or a history of early New England it provides us with an informative glimpse into the mind of early Americans.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a history
Review: For those interested in the story of this war, go elsewhere. It is not here.
The book is a speculation on the motivation of participants in the cultural conflict, and its consequences. I did not like the frequent suppositions-often they seem to be a figment of the authors imagination though no doubt founded in her vast knowledge of the subject. It just doesn't hold up as an historian's analysis.
Rating:
Summary: The author does not make the case for her title.
Review: I read "Founding Brothers" recently and found it much more interesting than I'd expected. The merits of the present book ... are diminished in contrast with that genuinely profound book still fresh in ones mind. One of that books minor insights was that the term `American' was a pejorative one at the time of the revolution (as was `democratic'). One synonymous with `rube' or `rustic', a bumpkin not worthy of the full privileges of British citizenship. This notion influenced my expectations for a book with the idea of "the origins of American identity" in its title. That somehow the events of King Phillips War for the first time raised the issue of being distinctly American for the colonists. And the beginnings of their coming to terms with this would be discussed in it. I finished the book with the feeling that the title is misleading. The conflict turns out to be local and, most significantly, confined to a specific religious group of colonist. Those we meet herein resist what they perceive as American influences as rigidly as possible. One of the author's arguments, that it was primarily the colonist's constant efforts to maintain their `British' domestic sensibilities that guided their experience of America. And that these efforts were a major factor that turned them against the Indians (which I didn't find convincing) seems to be her only justification for the title. Is insularity as significant as our author would have it? A striking moment in Ken Burns Lewis & Clark documentary occurs when the expedition has reached the Oregon coast and winter at the mouth of a river in an Indian settlement. The river is teeming with salmon which they refuse but rather ask permission of the Indians to slaughter dogs for meat. The episode is presented for our amusement in the documentary. I suspect our present author would find far greater, deep, dark significance within it. The author does make the case that as contact between settlers and Indians increased they became more and more appalled with each other. This doesn't seem to be a new or very profound insight, however. She examines whether the growing hatred between the groups was specifically religious in nature and if the result was a `holy war'. This seems obviously true. And should have probably been the theme of the book and the source for a different title. But inexplicably she equivocates on this point. This is puzzling. Was she afraid she'd appear anti-Puritan? As she extensively quotes the New England Puritan's accounts of events, even when cited to show the settlers `clinging' to their `Britishness', and other more dubious arguments, their self-righteous religious tone is most prominent. When she IS focused on her examination of the religious nature of the conflict she quotes a Mid Atlantic Quaker's ironic observation regarding the specifically Puritan `saints' capacity for unrestrained savagery that for me conclusively makes the case that it was indeed a `holy war'.
More puzzling still is the tangential account of the revival of interest in King Phillips War 150 years later. The examination of a melodrama and its implications, immensely popular in Jacksonian America is first of all confused. We are shown that it ennobled King Phillip to a degree that the reader knows is absurd. And we rightly find the audiences enthusiasm perplexing, because we are reminded that this was the time when `Indian removal' was a major issue and a popular one. We are then told (and not shown) that this incongruity could occur because the play presented the noble Indian as remote in time and that it somehow conveys the inevitability of the Indians passing even as it ennobles him. Even if we accept this fact without being shown the text that supports it, this does not seem to resolve the contradiction. Like the author I find the existence of this disparity of opinion at this particular time interesting, but otherwise miss her point. Secondly, a narrative of a quaintly antique melodrama about a noble savage and the buffoonish ham that played the character seems to belong in an entirely different book. Specifically Banvard's Folly: Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity, and Rotten Luck by Paul S. Collins. Another book I recently read and enjoyed. Although no effort is made to draw profound conclusions form the strange episodes contained within it. I suspect the author's initial thesis of her book on King Phillips (bloody little) War proved too grand. To interpret the local settlers' accounts of events to indicate sweeping changes in the nature of the British settlers of America as a whole that bound them together proved untenable. The eventual book seems manufactured, fleshed out of disparate elements related to the war over time, like the early 19th Century melodrama mentioned and a meditation on Indian politics at the present day site of one of the war's memorials. Elements that the author was unable to direct into the single trajectory of a unified narrative whole. If I became interested in this war I'd investigate this pages links to one of the other books on the topic.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing Analysis of War and Cultural Identity
Review: If you are looking for a narrative history of King Philip's War, you will not find it here. Instead you will find something much more interesting and more important: an intelligent analysis of the cultural issues that caused the war, caused it to be fought in the way it was, and caused it to be treated in contemporary writing as it was. It not only explicates how the New Englanders of the time "justified" their conduct of the war, and their conduct toward the Native Americans generally, but also reasons or speculates persuasively on how the Native Americans viewed the same events. Readers more familiar with the chronological "facts" of the war might find the book somewhat more accessible, but such knowledge isn't a prerequisite to understanding its purpose and argument. Even if one has little knowledge of the war's events, this book is a rich and insightful read for anyone taking it on its own terms. Be forewarned, however: many of the insights regarding New England's European ancestors are neither flattering nor inspiring.
Rating:
Summary: Fair
Review: In depicting the events of the 17th century's "King Philip's War," (1675-76) Jill Lepore also sheds light on the complex relationships natives were forced to negotiate with white settlers. Many Indians were caught between two worlds-their own and that of the colonizers, who posed a threat to their survival. The most obvious example of adaptation Lepore provides is the thousands of "praying Indians" who lived among the whites in several different towns, where they learned Christianity and the English language as well. Indian James Printer, for example, James Printer, had set type for Bible printings in Massachusetts, and floated back and forth between worlds during the conflict itself.
The persistence of Native Americans in New England is one of Lepore's major themes. Indians suffered horrendous losses during the war (as did the colonists), followed by disease, which only compounded their miseries. She notes that in the view of whites, King Philp (and by implication, all Indians) survive today only symbolically. She notes that one can hike to King Phillip's Rock in Sharon, Massachusetts, attend King Phillip High School in Wrentham, Massachusetts, or lodge at the King Phillip Inn in Bristol, Rhode Island. Whites today assume that New England's native peoples were eliminated soon after European colonization. Such is not the case. Lepore also argues that New England's natives were never a unified coalition, rather, they adapted to the arrival of whites by forging alliances with them in order to smite their traditional Indian enemies-in King Philip's War, several tribes fought with the colonists.
Rating:
Summary: Warning-Not really about King Philip's War
Review: In this tremendous source on a forgotten war, Ms. Lepore does not give the standard play-by-play of history. Instead she answers many questions about the thought and talk of the time. It truly is remarkable. There is one cavet to my praise. In her attempts to understand the Puritan mind and motivation, Ms. Lepore makes some leaps that are ... well, absurd. They are easily seen though, and if not taken as Gospel truth in analysis, it is a wonderful source. The book's attempt to understand and explain the First Nations' point of view is so laudable and so needed. Ms. Lepore has done a superb job!
Rating:
Summary: thought provoking
Review: It has been often said that "history is written by the victors." Lepore's book, _The Name of War_ certainly is evidence of this maxim. Yet it is much more. Lepore's detailing of a seminal event in colonial American history highlights it as a precedent for future relatins between Native Americans and European Americans, while insightfully exploring the clash of cultures that was at the root of the conflict. Much of the book is concerned with the way in which the Puritains (and other New Englanders) interpreted the war and its aftermath - yet the issue of cultural misunderstanding and fear of each other is never far from the surface - Native Americans fearing becomming "Anglicanized" and the fears of the European colonists "going native."
Lepore's accont of the conflict, its causes and immeadiate aftermath was excellent. I cared less for the final third of the book where events were romanticized for mass consumption (ie. the idea of the Native Americans as "noble savages") even as the Plains Tribes were being systematically decimated and relocated much as the Native Americans of Massachusetts and Connecticut were before them. In spite of this criticism, a marvelous book. I recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Balanced + Insightful
Review: Jill Lepore's book is a scholarly and capivating account of the War known as King Phillip's War. I know nobody that is aware that this war took place and to now know the extent to which the Native Americans nearly (and rightfully) wipped-out the British Colony is a large piece of our early colonial history and native american history that we should all be aware of - as aware as any other war this country has experienced.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Book
Review: This book was a real joy to read. I put it on my wish list after seeing the author speak on C-Span. Her understanding of the scope, magnitude and ramifications of this early American war came across. As a matter of fact, it was more her passion for the information that drove me to get the book than the subject matter. Well, the book didn't disappoint. Her writing is very readable and she conveys a great deal of information in just a little space. I would be remiss if I didn't add that, as other reviewers have pointed out, she doesn't tell a linear history. That means that you, and I (I'm hooked on the topic now), will have to seek out other sources.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor in approach and in style.
Review: This is a moral relativist/post-modern/revisionist and (therefore necessarily) stridently anti-Christian tome. So undoubtably, some of you will enjoy it.
Ms. Lepore wrote this book primarily to add her singular invective onto the mountain of slanderous and false accusations already accumalted about the people who settled and built this country. And I thought post-modernist were not supposed to be judgemental?
A sample of the enlightening revisiting of history Ms. Lepore regales us with is her assertion that torture (of the most hideous and unspeakable nature, well described in this book), practiced by the Indians against English settlers in King Phillips War, was really just as an expression of cultural norms in the Indian "community" and therefore not "wrong" in any absolute sense. Nevertheless Ms. Lepore is in high dudgeon when she describes one occasion when white settlers set fire to an Indian village and slaughtered women and children fleeing the flames. Here she is careful to not explain that in a time of war, such atrocities, thought wrong to be sure, are not a surprise from any army frustrated by an enemy who will not stand in the field and fight, but instead scatter and hide, leaving women and children exposed. (I don't know about you but if I were to leave my wife and children in the clutches of the enemy while I was hiding nearby, which the Indians did regularly (as do Palestianian militants today) I would be far more concerned about being accused of cowardice than of accusing my enemy of murder.) Furthermore, Ms. Lepore in condemning the isolated incidents of murder on the part of white's, neglects to point out that just about every time Indians came upon white women and children in King Phillips War, they raped and murdered them or took them captive.
People who find the occassional abuse by an American soldier of an innocent abroad as far more a source of concern, then say children being blown up by terrorist, or adults having their heads cut off by same, will love this book. Those who feel the the opposite will not.
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