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
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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