Ten people gathered at the Bristol Historical and Preservation Society on August 28, 2022 for a Book Club discussion of The Name of War by Jill Lepore. Led by Sowams Heritage Area Project Coordinator Dr. David Weed (on the far right in the photo from a previous Book Club event), the group shared their reactions to the book and the many points the author makes about the King Philip War and its interpretation over different periods of history. Click here for an audiobook preview recording of the book.

From BookRags: The most brutal war in American history is one about which most Americans have never heard, but King Philip’s War was among the most destructive war in terms of lives lost and blood spilled per person that the United States has ever seen. Sometimes named Metacom’s War or Metacom’s Rebellion, King Philip’s War was a series of battles between Native American tribes that inhabited southern New England (mostly Algonquian) and the English colonists and their Native American allies between 1675 and 1676. . . Lepore covers all the events and more in the book but largely devotes her time to analyzing the ways in which King Philip’s War was the result of simultaneous identity crises on the part of the colonists and the Indians in terms of their language, habits of cruelty, religion, slavery and historical narratives.