Show SUNDAY March 15 1998 BOOKS SfcfSaltfakfSrihnM Lepore Revives a Forgotten War BY NICHOLAS A BASBANES THE WEST UNDER COVER ration coverage of the Gulf War and feeling overwhelmed by how unreal and distant that war seemed even though I had much more information and vivid pictures of it than any other war in the history of the world Lepore Making war is an exercise in human frailty but making sense of it is another matter altogether as author Jill Lepore makes clear in a compelling new book about a horrific episode in Americas distant past that in many ways helped define its future This is a study of war and of how people write about it Lepore an assistant professor of history at Boston University writes at the outset of The Name of War (Alfred A Knopf 337 pages $30) The subject of her inquiry told within the framework of a superbly structured narrative is King Philips War a conflict waged throughout New England between June 1675 and August 1676 that the vast majority of Americans know little about today but found absorbing well into the 19th century It has pretty much disappeared from our national memory Lepore 31 said in a recent interview But when I began researching King Philips War I was surprised at how critical it was in our history and in our emerging sense of national consciousness Named for a leader of the Wampanoag Indians known as Metacom in the Algonquian language King Philip to the English colonists the war was fought a full century before shots were exchanged on the greens of Lexington and Concord and produced thousands of casualties It began when Philip led an attempt by an alliance of Indian nations to drive the white settlers and regain sovereignty over New England Though rarely studied today King Philips War was one of the deadliest confrontations in American history certainly among the most brutal with egregious behavior rampant on both sides Although precise numbers of dead and wounded are impossible to determine no fewer than 30 towns were decimated throughout Massachusetts Connecticut Rhode Island and parts of New York while hundreds of Indians were either killed or shipped out of the region and sold into slavery When the English and Algonquian peoples of seventeenth-centur- y New England went to war in 1675 they devastated one another Lepore writes In proportion to population their short vicious war inflicted greater casualties than any other war in American history Among the many ironies attached to this saga is that King Philip was the son of Massa-sothe Indian chief who welcomed the Pilgrims to Plymouth in 1620 and joined with them to observe the first Thanksgiving said Peoples perceptions of King Philips War by contrast came at a time when there was no mass media when even wood engravings and printed books were scarce items To deter- "The Puritan records pay very little attention to what reasons the Indians may have had for conducting the war One of the most disheartening experiences for the Puritans when they arrived in the New World was that the Indians did not immediately recognize the superiority of the Europeans Jill Lepors Author of "The Name of War On Aug 17 1678 when colonial soldiers marched into Plymouth with Philips head on a pole effectively marking the end of the war a far more gruesome celebration was organized Philips son meanwhile was sent to the Caribbean and sold into slavery it mine what people felt about the war the ways they expressed it the specific language they used Lepore conducted extensive research in libraries and archives throughout the region More than 400 letters written by colonists during the war survive in various New England archives alone along with more than 30 editions of 20 different printed accounts She also had access to many diaries and chronicles and a surprising number of reminis cences left in the form of petitions to the various legislatures by people known as Christian Indians This is not so surprising since John Eliot who in 1661 published what is known as the Indian Bible learned the Algonquian language worked tirelessly trying to convert the Indians to Christianity and taught a number of them how to read and write English and they in turn worked as translators for him Although Lepore has decided feelings about the conduct of the war Lepore said she does not see her book as any kind of morality tale and makes a particular effort to point out that unspeakable brutality was committed on both sides King Philips War was the model for all Indian wars that followed Indians in New England still consider Philip a hero she said The reason the colonists wrote about the war at such great length is that they so appalled by what had happened she said Although the war is largely ignored today it did produce the first g book in America The Soveraignty sic and Goodness of God (1682) the account of three months in captivity by Mary Rowlandson wife of a Lancaster Mass minister The Puritan records pay very little attention to what reasons the Indians may have had for conducting the war Lepore said One of the most disheartening experiences for the Puritans when they arrived in the New World was that the Indians did not immediately recognize the superiority of the Europeans best-sellin- Nicholas A Basbanes is a columnist and literary critic based in Massachusetts Tales of the Night Shows Off Hoegs Earlier Talents world with Smillas Sense of Snow Hoeg whose most recent work is The Woman and the Ape prefaces his early stories with this explanation: These eight stories are linked by a date and motif All of them have to do with love Love and its conditions on the night of March 19 1929 Like the novels that followed Tales of the Night shows Hoeg as a man of many interests as well as social satirist with a mocking view of Denmark The final tale Reflection of a Young Man in Balance reveals that Hoeg has studied mirrors just as he made himself an expert on ice and snow for Smilla Story of a Marriage delves into the dark secrets Tales of the Night By Peter Hoeg translated by Barbara Farrar Straus & Giroux 23 BY MALCOLM JOHNSON THE HARTFORD COURANT American readers can now explore the early work of another Scandinavian who has established an international reputation In January Doubleday published Under the Snow a newly translated 1961 novel by Swedens Ker-sti- n Ekman (Blackwater) Now Farrar Straus & Giroux has Tales of the Night in bookstores The collection of short stories by Peter Hoeg was first printed in Denmark in 1990 two years before the Danish writer conquered the of a model Copenhagen family worshiped pillars of the community Marriage and The Verdict on the Right Honorable Ignalio Landstad Rasker call to mind Hoegs A History of Danish Dreams published in the United States after Smilla and Border-liner- s but preceding all of Hoegs other work in Denmark Hoegs debt to Hans Christian Andersen who hovers over Danish Dreams can often be felt in his dark fairy tales for our time in his ironic versions of Danish history The touch of the great master is evident in one of the longer stories Pity for the Children of Vaden Town set in a paragon community on the east 12 The Man Who listen to Horse by Roberts (Rssdom House) 13 The Long Hard ftnod Out of HeU by Mari- BEST SELLERS Monty lyn Manson (ReganBooks) 14 The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang (Basic Books) Here are the bestselling books as the appear in next week's issue ol Publishers Weekly Hardcover Action I The Street lawyer by John Grisham (Doub- (Putnam) IS The God of Snail Things by Arundhati leday) 1 3 Prdlse Roy (Random Toni Morrison (Knopf) 3 Cold Mountain by Charles Frasier (Atlantic by 2 Simple Abundance by Sarah by Anna Quindlen (Random Breath-nac- S Tueadaya With Monde by Mitch Albom House) (Doubleday) 5 Maaotre of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (Knopf) 4 The Millionaire Next Door t i Account by Christopher Reich (Delacorte) B The Cat Who Sang tor the Birds by Lilian Jackson Braun (Putnam) 10 A Certain Justice by PD James (Knopf) I I Fear Nothing by Dean Koonts (Bantam) 13 The Winner by David Baldaca (Warner) 13 Miracle Cure by Michael Palmer (Bantam) 14 Guilty Pleasure Lawrence Sanders by by Thomas Stanley and William Danko (Longstreet) B Angela' Ashot by Frank McCourt (Scnbner) 8 Midright in the Geidcn of Good and Evil by John Berendt (Random House) 7 Cooreraatioae With God Book 1 by Neale Donald Walsch (Putnam) 8 Don't Worry Make Money by Richard Carlson (Hypenon) 9 Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (Villard) 10 Jackie After Jack by Christopher Andersen (Morrow) 11 The Perfect storm by Sebastian Junger Jackie Collins (Simon Schuster) 7 Blood Work by Michael Connelly (Little by Brown) S Numbered Ban (Warner) 4 Black and Bloe 6 Thrill! House) Hardcover nonfiction Talking To Heaven by James Van Praagh (Dutton) Monthly) Reviews of books of regional interest I began thinking about the project when I was in graduate school and watching the satu- SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE (NertOD) 15 Eat Right fin Tow Type by Peter J (Putnam) o paperbacks 1 The Partner by John Grisham (Dell island) 2 A Night to Remember by Walter Lord (Bantam) 3 The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks (Warner) 4 Dr Atkina' New Diet Revolution by Robert C Atkins (Avon) 5 Small Town GW by LaVyrle Spencer (Jove) 8 The Right Uvea On by Walter Lord (Avon) 7 Hornet' Neat by Patricia Cornwell (Berk- ley) 8 The Maze by Catherine Coulter (Jove) 6 The Ranch by Danielle Steel (Dell) 10 Primary Colon by Anonymous (Warner) 1 1 Loa Alamo bv Joseph Kanon (Island) 12 Muck In the Night by VC Andrews (Pocket Star) 13 Trank Mnak by Michael Connelly (St Martins) 14 The Cat Who Tailed a Thief by Lilian Jackson Braun (Jove) 15 Snow In August by Pete HarniR (Warner coast of Jutland Tales of the Night reflects other influences too The opening story Journey Into a Dark Heart set in colonial Africa is obviously inspired by Joseph Conrad while Homage a Boumon-vill- e dedicated to August Antoine Bournonville centers on a former dancer for Copenhagens Royal Ballet drawing on Hoegs own past as a dancer Though sometimes philosophical reflecting the authors youth and desire to declare himself a cerebral sort every tale in this collection has its own fascinations Hoeg is a born storyteller and his creations reverberate with a sense of the hazards and mysteries of love ly Vision) Trade paperbacks 1 Don't Sweat the Small Staff by Richard Carlson (Hyperion) 2 Janies Cameron Titanic by Ed Marsh (HarperPerenmal) 3 Chicken Soup (or the Teen-ag- e Seat by Canfield Hansen and Kirberger (HCI) 4 Here o Earth by Alice Hoffman (Putnam) 8 The Color of Water by James McBride 8 Divine Secrets of the Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells (HsrperPerennial) 7 Under the Tuscan Son by Frances Mayes (Broadway) 5 A Child Called It by Dave Pelier (HCI) 9 The Beanie Baby Handbook 1998 Edition by Lee and Sue Fox (Weet Highland Pubs lishing) 10 The 7 EaMta of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey (FirendeSAS) 11 Undaunted Courage by Stephen E Ambrose (S4STouchstone) 12 A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr (Vintage) 13 Titanic: An Dtaetrated History by Don Lynch (Hyperion) 14 The Titsnks End of a Dream by Wyn Craig Wade (Penguin) 18 The Simpsons A Complete Guide to Om Favorite Family by Matt Greening by Wide Skies Finding a Home in the West By Gary Holthaus University of Arizona Press: $39 95 cloth $16 95 paper BY MARTIN NAPARSTECK SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE While traveling in southwestern Utah Gary Holthaus realizes something about the land: This western landscape is seen by many who live elsewhere as the most desirable region to create a life yet it is also one of the most difficult in which to make a living from the land Our western land is at once economical and extravagant spare and generous penurious and prodigal It promises much but welches on nearly every promise Although his comment is made in a chapter on Utah A Gentile Pilgrim in the Promised Land the longest chapter in the book it applies to his whole concept of the West Thats what Wide Skies Finding a Home in the West is about a concept The idea of the West That idea is a large one en- compassing in Holthauss all of America He writes in his preface Our storytellers of book and film have enshrined the West deep in our national consciousness and whether mythical or real pictures and stories of the West have shaped our vision of ourselves as Americans Part of that vision he later explains is that there is no part of the West that is at ease He defines the West as extending from the central Dakotas through central Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma and Texas and it flows over the Rockies and across the high deserts of the Colorado Plateau and eastern Oregon and Washington He throws in Alaska but specifically excludes the West Coast both because the ecology is different and too many people live there The uneasiness of the West results at least in part from its sparse population And that in turn supports his notion that the Western story is the story of all of America Those Americans who came from Europe kept moving westward away from the population centers and that put them in conflict with the peoples who already lived there and also separated them in culture and spirit from those they left behind The West has always had an essentially dual personality one part independent of one view part drawn wholly from America like a son who disappoints his parents because he grew up to be his own man not a clone of his father or mother When Holthaus was a young man he moved from Iowa where he grew up and which does not fit into his definition of the West to Montana of which he concludes the possibility of creating oneself anew was more real than anywhere else Id even been He learned that unlike in the movies a man walked his horse more than he rode it And he learned over the years things far more important about what the West means Perhaps chief of these is the need for a scarcity of water to keep the West The West: If we love the West we will beware of anyone who proposes to bring us an endless supply of bountiful water That person brings us not a happy life in the West he or she would bring us Ohio Not trusting those who would turn the West into Ohio is not the same as not wanting those left behind to join those who made the West their home Rather it is a matter of accepting the West for what it is its ecology the harshness of its land Holthaus draws from the writings of poet Gary Snyder to shape this point The fact that nature doesnt feel an obligation to comfort us to provide for our needs is what freedom is all about and by extension what the West means The profound indifference in the world beyond our doorstep is liberating Holthaus writes for it exerts no pressure to conform to the expectations of others Natures indifference is the source the fountainhead of an etiquette of freedom that Snyder says we can learn from the wild Acceptance becomes mutual The world accepts us we accept the world Holthaus developed his ob- servations while traveling around the West setting up programs for the National Endowment for the Humanities Now living in Boulder Colo he often visited southern Utah to bring poet David Lee writer Terry Tempest Williams Utah State University scholar Tom Lyon (who may know more about western American literature than anyone else in the country) to Salina and Springdale and Richfield and other Utah communities He notes that these Utah towns are working towns intentional communities on the spiritual level in this kind of community the 21st chapter of Romans is the model: When one rejoices all rejoice when one suffers all suffer The idea of the West is the idea of the free individual in harmony with the land within a community So complicated so simple 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