The Name of War

Winner of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award

“An evocative, powerful, and troubling book about a little-known war that speaks to all wars.” —The New Republic

“Brilliant. . . . Lepore’s grasp of the complexities and varieties of the human beings in her drama matches that of a fine novelist. . . . This is history as it should be written.”  —The Boston Globe

“Fascinating . . . rich in imagination, in moral ruminations about the meaning and justice of war.”  —The New York Review of Books

“Jill Lepore has written a brilliant study of the different ways Americans have understood and told stories about one of the great conflicts of their colonial past: King Philip’s War. Writing with great grace and clarity, she offers fascinating new insights into the different ways that Indians and colonists made sense of their cultural differences.” —William Cronon, author of Changes in the Land

“The Name of War adds wonderfully rich new dimensions to the history of white-Indian relations in the United States: sharp focus, a rich sense of context, anticipations of an comparisons with subsequent American wars. This is a profound and rewarding book that illuminates the social psychology of war in the American experience.” —Michael Kammen, author of Mystic Chords of Memory

“Jill Lepore shows how language shaped as well as reflected the horror we know as ‘King Philip’s War.’ Finding Algonquin voices within, behind, and beside the classic English narratives, she forces new engagement with the evasions, celebrations, and violence of New England history.” —Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, author of A Midwife’s Tale