A revealing study from a forgotten theater of the war against Native America.
Deeply researched biography of an overlooked Native American leader.
When members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints—Mormons, as University of Nebraska historian Mueller colloquially calls them—arrived in Utah in the late 1840s, they encountered a Timpanogos Ute leader named Wakara, whom they called Walker. Wakara made a handsome living in two untoward trades: He was an accomplished horse thief, raiding far into California, and he traded in enslaved people. Wakara professed to convert through baptism, becoming “the first Utah Native to be ordained in the Mormon priesthood.” Many other Indigenous people, including a hundred of Wakara’s band, also converted. But when Mormon settlers began to encroach on Ute hunting and fishing grounds, fencing off traditional festival areas, Wakara mounted a war of resistance. Complications abound: Although Brigham Young wound up suing for peace, he waged a war against the Utes in which hundreds of Native people—mostly women and children—were massacred, even as the Indigenous rebels, for their part, killed plenty of settlers. And ironies abound: Although the slave trade was technically illegal and accounted immoral, the Mormons effectively took it over from Wakara, especially by bullying Paiute families into selling their children, who were then indentured “until they worked off the cost of their own purchase price.” Official Latter-Day Saints doctrine held that the Natives, or Lamanites, as they called them, were “white and delightsome,” but that did nothing to end the depredations. As Mueller observes, the Walker War ended following Wakara’s death: Possibly poisoned by arsenic that laced a gift of tobacco from Young, he was buried with two of his wives, two enslaved Paiutes, and a dozen horses, all slaughtered for the occasion. But the Utes and other Native peoples continued to suffer, converts or not, removed from fertile lands to inhospitable reservations and even, well into the 20th century, from national parks such as Arches.
A revealing study from a forgotten theater of the war against Native America.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781541602595
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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