Author: Jill Lepore
Title: The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity
Narrator: Bernadette Dunne
Publication Info: Random House Audio (2021) [Originally published in 1998]
Summary/Review: 
Jill Lepore explores the history of King Philip’s War, fought in New England from 1675 to 1678 between an alliance of several Algonquian-speaking indigenous tribes under the leadership of Wampanoag Chief Metacomet, a.k.a. King Philip, and the English of the New England colonies and their Mohegan, Pequot, and Mohawk allies. The war is poorly defined in American history with even the name controversial. Was Philip a King? Was his name even Philip? Was it really a war or an exchange of atrocities?
Lepore investigates how the war changed the way the English colonists identified themselves. She also examines the historical resources to find the Native perspective on the war that’s not often directly recorded in Western literature. A large part of the book focuses on the captivity narratives that became one of the major forms of literature that arose from the war. She also details the lasting legacy of the war, particularly how Metacomet became a romanticized figure in American drama in the mid-1800s at the same time that Andrew Jackson is forcibly removing the Cherokee from the Southeastern states.
It is a very interesting historical account of a significant but forgotten war and a historiology of the study of war itself.
Recommended books:
- Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
- War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
Rating: ****
Panorama of the Mountains 