A readable biography of Lakota chief Red Cloud that attempts to untangle the many conflicting accounts of this key figure in 19th-century America. Larson, a retired professor of history (Univ. of Northern Colorado, Greeley), places the rather scanty and unreliable information we have about Red Cloud's life within the larger context of Indian tribal conflicts, the Anglo-Indian wars, and the eventual peace that was established between the Indians and the conquering Anglo-Americans. Born in 1821 to a Lakota Sioux band and well known for his valor on the battlefield (against both whites and other Indians), he became the acknowledged leader of his tribe. As he was nearing 40, however, and past his physical prime, Red Cloud was content to leave the fighting to younger warriors, such as Crazy Horse, and focus his attentions on political dealings with the US government. Representing the Lakotas, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes, Red Cloud signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, making peace with the whites. But though he was a tough negotiator, the government was in fact heeding its own interests when it conceded to him many of his demands. It had discovered that supporting the Indians was more economical than fighting them, and determined to move the Lakota Sioux onto reservations. Red Cloud agreed to the condition—against the wishes of other Sioux chiefs- -although it would not be until two years later, after his first visit to Washington to meet the ``Great White Father,'' that he would begin his long career on the reservation. There he continued to be a vital spokesman for his people, helping to preserve their land and their heritage. He died in 1909. A good start, although the man behind the legend still remains cloaked in mystery. (21 illustrations and 1 map, not seen)
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8061-2930-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Univ. of Oklahoma
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
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 Yorker staff 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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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