A readable and unfailingly interesting look at a slice of Western history from a novel point of view.
An iconic national park becomes the stage for a complex game of 19th-century politics.
The Yellowstone country was not well explored until the 1870s, writes historian Nelson, “hemmed in by four mountain ranges” and sprinkled with the bones of unlucky adventurers. It did not help that numerous Native peoples, including the Hunkpapa (which Nelson correctly renders as Húŋkpapȟa) Lakota under Sitting Bull, considered the Yellowstone territory to be theirs and took pains to keep interlopers out. Arrayed against these Indigenous peoples were several concerns. Montana’s territorial governor, Nathaniel Langford, was interested in the country on its own terms, but there was also business behind it; he was just one of many who wanted to push a northerly transcontinental railroad through the region. The author displays her strong commitment to including the Native presence in any account of Western history, but there’s another twist in this tale: Nelson links the policy of domination of Native peoples with the unfinished business of Reconstruction in the South, extending federal control over recalcitrant states and individuals. “Republicans in the early 1870s,” she writes, “saw both projects as part of a national ideal: to create productive and patriotic American citizens.” As Ulysses S. Grant and other leading Republicans knew, the South was no place they could look for votes, but the West certainly was. All that remained was to settle the West with likely Republicans by removing obstacles, geographical or human. By Nelson’s account, it’s no accident that Henry Dawes, a Massachusetts senator who was a strong advocate for the creation of Yellowstone National Park, was also the author of legislation that settled Native peoples not on shared domains but instead allotted each individual Native American a small plot of land, destroying cultural norms. Reconstruction may have failed, but in their effort to weaken the Native population, the Republicans were successful for decades.
A readable and unfailingly interesting look at a slice of Western history from a novel point of view.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982141-33-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
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
An inspiration for those fighting for democratic rights in the face of authoritarianism.
A spirited history of homegrown noncompliance.
There’s the history we know, and then, below that iceberg’s tip, all that we don’t. Stoermer, a public historian and teacher, does yeoman work in digging up stories that are far from the “safe, sanitized, often nationalistic version of the past.” Early on in his narrative, for example, come complex events out of early colonial New England. First is the revolt of Indigenous peoples led by the sachem Metacomet, a revolt that blossomed into “proportionally, the deadliest war in American history for the colonials,” one that textbooks would prefer to forget in favor of rosy stories of the first Thanksgiving. A decade later follows the not-unconnected Salem witchcraft trials, met by dissenters called the Unconfessed, who refused to accept the inquisitors’ assertions of heresy and sorcery, rebuking “a state that demanded its citizens validate its lies.” Given the flood of lies that inundates the country today, their resistance is a particularly valuable lesson. Almost unknown outside specialist circles is Stoermer’s account of the so-called Six, abolitionists who, prosperous and influential, “had accepted that tactical violence was necessary” in resisting slavery, financing, and otherwise supporting John Brown’s rebellion. Their story does not end happily; when the bullets flew, most of them withdrew. Throughout, Stoermer draws lessons to offer by way of a primer for today’s dissenters—for instance, “When systematic oppression operates at scale, resistance needs people who can build sophisticated infrastructure,” and, in doing so, who can contribute to a machinery of resistance to combat the machinery of the state. Usefully, he also reminds readers that even in defeat can come victory of sorts, as with the anti-Federalists who demanded that the Constitution contain amendments that “would later be used to challenge Jim Crow, expand civil rights, and protect individual liberty against state power.”
An inspiration for those fighting for democratic rights in the face of authoritarianism.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9781586424367
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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