Ben Waber reviewed The Name of War by Jill Lepore
A Painful, Revelatory History
5 stars
This book feels personal to me since I live in the Boston area - the part of Natick near the Charles River where the praying Indians gathered before being shipped off to Deer Island, where over half of them would starve before being allowed to return a few years later, is on my regular running route. I've read about King Philip's War before, but Lepore's book is on a completely different level, explaining the context behind the spark of John Sassamon's killing (whose name is still plastered all over Natick), the motivations behind the different players in the conflict, the arc of the war, and its extremely long aftermath. The combination of a wide variety of primary sources to piece together spotty portions of history and exploring the implications of different explanations is impressive, and I appreciated the sections on naming conventions. If you live in, or have lived in, …
This book feels personal to me since I live in the Boston area - the part of Natick near the Charles River where the praying Indians gathered before being shipped off to Deer Island, where over half of them would starve before being allowed to return a few years later, is on my regular running route. I've read about King Philip's War before, but Lepore's book is on a completely different level, explaining the context behind the spark of John Sassamon's killing (whose name is still plastered all over Natick), the motivations behind the different players in the conflict, the arc of the war, and its extremely long aftermath. The combination of a wide variety of primary sources to piece together spotty portions of history and exploring the implications of different explanations is impressive, and I appreciated the sections on naming conventions. If you live in, or have lived in, Massachusetts, this is required reading. Highly recommend