Rating: 
Summary: An Uncommon Woman
Review: A fine biography of one of Colonial America's most fascinating people, Anne Hutchinson. A well-researched work as to people, places, and the arcane theological disputes between Mistress Hutchinson and Governor John Winthrop. The author, a direct descendant of Ms. Hutchinson has written a balanced account-- given the environment -- of the cracks in religious orthodoxy which those in power thought a threat to the City on the Hill. I loved the book. A retired lawyer in Minneapolis.
Rating:
Summary: American Jezebel, a terrific book
Review: A great portrait of the colonial rebel Anne Hutchinson
that resonates with issues faced by women today,
starting with how to balance home life and work.
AMERICAN JEZEBEL also gives us a vivid depiction of
17th century Puritan life in Elizabethan England and
Massachusetts. The book opens with Hutchinson's trial
for heresy, which is beautifully described and
explained, as a result of which she was banished from
Boston and went on to found the colony of Rhode
Island! This book shows how extraordinary Anne
Hutchinson was and that, as the first PERSON in
America to espouse religious freedom and individual
rights, she should be considered our founding mother.
What a character! She raised 15 kids, was a midwife,
AND could debate theology with the founders of Harvard
College and make them look foolish (while pregnant for
the 16th time)! The maps of 17th century Boston,
Portsmouth, Rhode Island, the Bronx, and Lincolnshire,
England alone, along with Laplante's excellent guide
to touring these sites of Hutchinson's life, are worth
the price of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Anne Hutchinson should be on everyone's lips.
Review: AMERICAN JEZEBEL is a compelling and fast-paced work that offers a colorful close-up on life in colonial America. Eve LaPlante has masterfully created a detailed sense of place and manners in early New England, allowing us to fully engage in the Puritan world of the confident, literate, ever-pregnant and heroic Anne Hutchinson.
I have to ask... whose idea was it all these years to hide the story of Anne Hutchinson from the grammar and high school American history student? Anne's biography of conscience and faith is very important and should be celebrated in our schools. The image of Anne, articulate and self-assured, standing up to the array of 40 male judges should be as ingrained as the image of honest Abe Lincoln walking back several miles to a store when he noticed he'd been given one penny too much in change.
Read this book. Tell others to read it. And let's get Anne Hutchinson into the school curriculum in the US. LaPlante has done a great service here, so effectively shedding light on Hutchinson's struggle for women's rights and freedom of expression, as well as her outspoken defense of the natives' rights. AMERICAN JEZEBEL of the 1600s has the ring of a modern feminist story, as the issues Hutchinson faced are not so different from issues we face today. Anne Hutchinson's vision, courage and accomplishments are astonishing. I've been thoroughly captured by this book.
Rating:
Summary: Anne Hutchinson should be on everyone's lips.
Review: AMERICAN JEZEBEL is a compelling and fast-paced work that offers a vivid close-up on life in colonial America. Eve LaPlante has masterfully created a detailed sense of place and manners in early New England, allowing us to fully engage in the Puritan world of the confident, literate, ever-pregnant and heroic Anne Hutchinson. I have to ask... whose idea was it all these years to hide from the grammar and high school American history student the story of Anne Hutchinson? Her biography of conscience and faith is important and should be celebrated in our schools. The image of Anne, articulate and self-assured, standing up to the array of 40 male judges should be as ingrained as the image of honest Abe Lincoln walking back several miles to a store when he noticed he'd been given one penny too much in change. Read this book. Tell others to read it. And let's get Anne Hutchinson into the school curriculum in the US. LaPlante has done a great service here, so effectively shedding light on Hutchinson's struggle for women's rights and freedom of expression, as well as her outspoken defense of the natives' rights. AMERICAN JEZEBEL of the 1600s has the ring of a modern feminist story, as the issues Hutchinson faced are not so different from issues we face today. Anne Hutchinson's vision, courage and accomplishments are astonishing. I've been thoroughly captured by this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Work
Review: AMERICAN JEZEBEL is an excellent work, giving us a glimpse into the life of an extraordinary woman. In a world nearly four hundred years ago, that continues to echo into our own, the life of Anne Hutchinson has much to teach us still about women, religion, government and faith. Highly readable and meticulously researched, I especially appreciated the maps and descriptions of the world Hutchinson lived in and also the details on how to find the footprints of her world in ours today. A must for anyone interested in feminist scholarship, American history or religion.
Rating:
Summary: First-Rate Biography and History
Review: American Jezebel is fine biography of Anne Hutchinson, one of the more fascinating women in American history. Ms. LaPlante tells us about Anne the woman, her background, her family and her character, with well researched illuminating details about the Puritan church and colonial life. The theological debates are made as clear as they could be to us, centuries later, and also treats fairly the confrontation between John Winthrop, trying to save his fragile colony,and Mistress Hutchison, a perceived threat. I loved the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Heroine not well served by this book
Review: Anne Hutchinson was a courageous woman, for standing up for her beliefs and to men. Unfortunately, she was herself a religious fanatic, with perhaps more tolerance than some - perhaps - but with religious beliefs that in fact on the issue of "justification by works" at least were more extreme that that of her accusers. She did not protest or speak out against puritanical laws - she apparently believed laws against heretics were necessary - she merely wanted to define heretic. Nevertheless, a true heroine for bravery if not for her beliefs. The author, unfortunately, writes a thin book, with many an error on matters of religion, Puritan life, law and customs. With nowhere near enough information about Hutchinson to make a 288 page book, other than records of the proceedings, she dwells at length on them, apparently not understanding the arguments well herself. She also goes on interminably about the details of the altars, tombs, rood screens, etc. etc. of churches in England with only the most tangential relationship to Anne's life, not to mention the insufferably long episode of the author trying to locate the split rock. A book by a non-descendant hopefully would have been able to find more on-point material to fill the almost 300 pages.
Rating:
Summary: Heroine not well served by this book
Review: Anne Hutchinson was a courageous woman, for standing up for her beliefs and to men. Unfortunately, she was herself a religious fanatic, with perhaps more tolerance than some - perhaps - but with religious beliefs that in fact on the issue of "justification by works" at least were more extreme that that of her accusers. She did not protest or speak out against puritanical laws - she apparently believed laws against heretics were necessary - she merely wanted to define heretic. Nevertheless, a true heroine for bravery if not for her beliefs. The author, unfortunately, writes a thin book, with many an error on matters of religion, Puritan life, law and customs. With nowhere near enough information about Hutchinson to make a 288 page book, other than records of the proceedings, she dwells at length on them, apparently not understanding the arguments well herself. She also goes on interminably about the details of the altars, tombs, rood screens, etc. etc. of churches in England with only the most tangential relationship to Anne's life, not to mention the insufferably long episode of the author trying to locate the split rock. A book by a non-descendant hopefully would have been able to find more on-point material to fill the almost 300 pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Story Of A Neglected Person In History
Review: Anne Hutchinson, a woman, if you please, had the audacity to question the beliefs of John Winthrop and the Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Hutchinson, whom Winthrop called "an instrument of Satan", acquired a following while preaching God's grace for salvation rather than achieving it through good works, which Winthrop and most other ministers viewed as an encouragement to "do nothing" and still expect salvation. Hutchinson's confidence while in the courtroom galled her accusers as they struggled to find something to justify their disgust with her contrary viewpoint. Having been banished from Massachusetts Hutchinson moved to the island of Aquidneck which was then Rhode Island. Hutchinson and six of her children were killed by Siwanoy Indians in what is now part of Pelham Bay Park of the present-day Bronx, New York in 1643. Her nine-year old daughter, Susan, was out picking blueberries at the time and hid in what is called the Split Rock. She was captured and adopted by the Indians, and later returned to Boston and married. The book includes a few maps which prove to be helpful, but I would have liked if pictures had been available of some of the places that were part of her life. I found the book to be worth while to read, but I did find some of the religious rhetoric hard to follow at times.
Rating:
Summary: A Genuine American Hero
Review: As America faces continuing constitutional questions over such matters as the display of the Ten Commandments in government buildings and the daily pledging by children to acknowledge a God over their nation, it is good to be reminded that there has never been religious unanimity in our country, not even in its beginnings as a religious haven for the Puritans. It was Anne Hutchinson, a Puritan immigrant, who caused the first political (and necessarily religious) crisis in the colonies, and her story is told in detail in _American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans_ (HarperSanFrancisco) by Eve LaPlante. It is a stirring story of conscience and faith, and a refusal to buckle under to men and to the overwhelming religious majority. Hutchinson was truly a hero, and in many ways a founding mother of the republic that would be born more than a century after her death. Hutchinson, wife to a prosperous tradesman who plays little role in her story, immigrated to the Puritan Boston, and within two years caused controversy by holding women's meetings to discuss the weekly Bible reading and the most recent sermon they had heard. LaPlante is very good at describing the sources of Hutchinson's heresy, although Christian churches are quite different now and the tempest then seems very much one in an ancient teapot. The actual heresy matters little; what troubled Governor Winthrop and his fellow leaders was that she was acquiring a following, and that she threatened the status quo by the emphasis on individual conscience. (It was Winthrop who labeled her "American Jezebel;" it is incorrect to say the book has a misleading title since this is how she was known.) Thus in 1637 she was put before a colonial court (which will remind readers of the far more famous ones that condemned the witches in Salem a half century later) to pressure her to recant her heresies. Astonishingly, she conducted herself with such self-confidence (and she was in her sixteenth pregnancy at the time) that she won an acquittal, but she refused to go home quietly. Instead, she started lecturing her accusers, giving them more ammunition. Her profession of direct revelations from God was the basis of a second trial; it really isn't possible to think that such a gathering of men were going to let her go for long. She was excommunicated and banished in 1638. In the unforgiving words of one of her accusers, in Christ's name "... I do deliver you up to Satan, that you may learn no more to blaspheme, to seduce, and to lie!" Thirty families voluntarily went with her in banishment to the new settlement Rhode Island. There they drafted the Portsmouth Compact, which said that "no person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted or called into question on matters of religion - so long as he keeps the peace." This revolutionary and tolerant idea is the direct ancestor of the First Amendment of the Constitution. Hutchinson has also been given backhanded credit for the founding of Harvard College; her heresy inspired the colony to educate ministers who would not allow such sedition. She was to move on to New Amsterdam for further removal from English control, where in 1643 she was killed by Indians; an irony, for she was generous and tolerant to all tribesmen. She has been lauded as a feminist hero, but LaPlante's detailed and instructive biography makes clear that she was more than that. Hutchinson steadfastly refused to keep quiet, refused to have religious ideas imposed upon her, and refused to countenance religious imposition of any type on anyone, and thus she is a hero to anyone who cherishes individual freedom.
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