Reviewed by Carla Gardina Pestana | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.1

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Reviewed by Carla Gardina Pestana | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founding Father. By Francis J. Bremer . (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xviii, 478. $39.95.) Reviewed by Carla Gardina Pestana , Miami University
Teachers and scholars of early American history may be surprised to learn that John Winthrop has been forgotten. We all mention him and as often as not treat him extensively in our undergraduate courses on colonial America. Winthrop's sermon on "Christian Charity" is a famous if often misinterpreted document; it has been quoted by political leaders with notable frequency. Anyone who has ever written on seventeenth-century New England—and many who have ranged far afield from Winthrop's own region—have plumbed his journal and his collection of letters. Yet Francis Bremer asserts that both John Smith and Miles Standish are far better known. Although it is undoubtedly the case that Smith, whose popular cachet increased considerably after he was ludicrously portrayed as a tall, muscular blonde in Disney's Pocahontas, is more widely known, the idea that Winthrop has been forgotten seems odd at first glance.	1
Despite the book's subtitle, Bremer, scholar of New England Puritanism and host to a number of important conferences on Puritanism and the transatlantic connections between New England and seventeenth-century England, actually finds Winthrop not so much forgotten as woefully misunderstood. On the first page, he declares that "we have had the Winthrop used to dispel the images of dour steeple-hatted zealots and humanize the early colonists. We have had the tolerant Winthrop, who resisted the bigotry of his more zealous contemporaries, but also the intolerant Winthrop, who drove Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson into the howling American wilderness. Winthrop has also been used to demonstrate both the misogyny of early New Englanders and their loving marriages. Some, seeking to portray the native Americans as victims of an invasion of America, have interpreted Winthrop and his writings to advance their views. In these and other such cases the Winthrop of modern histories has been constructed to suit particular agendas" (pp. xv–xvi). Because it lacks footnotes identifying the proponents of these various Winthrops, this passage leaves readers to rely on their own familiarity with colonial scholarship to direct them to the offending authors. Bremer's goal in writing this first comprehensive Winthrop biography was to put aside modern agendas and perspectives. It is "time for a biography that is interested primarily in John Winthrop himself " (p. xvi).	. . .

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