Here are 100 books that In the Spirit of Crazy Horse fans have personally recommended if you like
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.
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I'm a nature writer and poet who lives, writes, and tends his modest grapevines on a small farm in the highlands of northern Michigan. My study and my work delves into the mysterious connections between all living things. I've sailed the world's lakes and oceans and lived on the land from Alaska to California to the Caribbean. The natural world cannot just be described but must be experienced – all the writers on my list have taken this approach – as I've followed the lead of these great writers but in my own unique way. I would enjoy a day on a secluded river with each of them in search of the elusive brook trout.
A classic American story following Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery from Virginia to the Pacific Coast and back again in the very early 1800s.
This book needs to be read not only by those interested in history but by all who would understand the origins of our nation. The complex personalities of Lewis, Clark, and Thomas Jefferson, who envisioned the journey come through in living color.
I'm a nature writer and poet who lives, writes, and tends his modest grapevines on a small farm in the highlands of northern Michigan. My study and my work delves into the mysterious connections between all living things. I've sailed the world's lakes and oceans and lived on the land from Alaska to California to the Caribbean. The natural world cannot just be described but must be experienced – all the writers on my list have taken this approach – as I've followed the lead of these great writers but in my own unique way. I would enjoy a day on a secluded river with each of them in search of the elusive brook trout.
Just a great novel – you will fall in love and empathize with the characters.
As always, Irving mixes in life and death making the fiction feel real. Irving has a way of surprising the reader. Each plot turn will bring out a new emotion. The reader will feel sorrow, anger, and love while identifying with the characters.
Most importantly, Irving has a real touch with making me laugh at the twists and turns of life.
'The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels.'
So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they 'dream on' in this funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel.
I'm a nature writer and poet who lives, writes, and tends his modest grapevines on a small farm in the highlands of northern Michigan. My study and my work delves into the mysterious connections between all living things. I've sailed the world's lakes and oceans and lived on the land from Alaska to California to the Caribbean. The natural world cannot just be described but must be experienced – all the writers on my list have taken this approach – as I've followed the lead of these great writers but in my own unique way. I would enjoy a day on a secluded river with each of them in search of the elusive brook trout.
Dalva (and the sequel The Road Home) is a literary fiction classic.
A story of generations and places with memorable characters. Poetic prose describes the landscape. Philosophy abounds. Make no mistake, Dalva and The Road Home are set in the wide open west – the plains and Sandhills of Nebraska. Harrison’s rebellious characters become one with their environment. The storylines are never lost even though Harrison often muses about the past and mixes his thoughts into the present without skipping a beat.
From her home on the California coast, Dalva hears the broad silence of the Nebraska prairie where she was born and longs for the son she gave up for adoption years before. Beautiful, fearless, tormented, at forty-five she has lived a life of lovers and adventures. Now, Dalva begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the half-Sioux lover of her youth and to a pioneering great-grandfather whose journals recount the bloody annihilation of the Plains Indians. On the way, she discovers a story that stretches from East to West, from the Civil…
I'm a nature writer and poet who lives, writes, and tends his modest grapevines on a small farm in the highlands of northern Michigan. My study and my work delves into the mysterious connections between all living things. I've sailed the world's lakes and oceans and lived on the land from Alaska to California to the Caribbean. The natural world cannot just be described but must be experienced – all the writers on my list have taken this approach – as I've followed the lead of these great writers but in my own unique way. I would enjoy a day on a secluded river with each of them in search of the elusive brook trout.
Conlan’s poignant reflections upon the vital role nature plays in all our lives will resonate with readers of all ages.
His journey tells a lyrical tale of an interesting life.
The author grows from tree forts and baseball through college and peace marches in the turbulent sixties. Follow his journey to fatherhood and on to Alaska where he sails the Bering Sea and visits the Arctic Circle.
Then on to Caribbean Islands adventures with memorable characters adding to the fun.
He returns triumphantly to the Great Lakes, where our protagonist becomes Captain of a Coast Guard Cutter sailing through more dangerous waters, including an epic adventure, off again to the Caribbean.
Most importantly, Conlan finds his way back home to Northern Michigan, to his grapevines, his family, and the more pleasant struggle to find the elusive brook trout.
Come “back to the simple earth,” where the author tends his modest…
“Back to the simple earth” — Tom Conlan comes by his love of the land naturally, generations after a beloved grandfather worked and saved to escape Detroit and move north. Conlan inherited that longing; he reveled in his boyhood of treeforts, baseball, and Sloppy Joes, even as it was unfolding. He revels in it still, with graceful language and long thoughts, with good dogs, good horses, and even better homemade wine. — Mardi Link, author of The Drummond Girls and Bootstrapper
MORE PRAISE FOR My Journey Begins Where the Road Ends:
“Deeply moving…told with all the tropes a good poet…
Before I started writing, my understanding of war largely came about through its manifestation over subsequent decades in individuals. My grandfather selectively shared stories from his time as a bomber, then as a POW in Germany. Maybe it was this conjunction, a personal sense of rebuilding and of storytelling, that has driven my interest in the subject over these years, as a journalist and critic and then as an author of a book on the subject.
Wars take a long time to end. Work is done to bury the loss, grief, and guilt described above as quickly as possible. Oftentimes the forces that stand to profit from this forgetting succeed, except among those groups which are either ignored or for whom the loss is too deep. What Layli Long Soldier’s brilliant Whereas discloses is how the acts of government, the papers generated like planks over a well, seek to hide that grief and loss, and how those groups might reclaim the stories those papers hope to disappear.
WHEREAS confronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations.
When I was 22, I joined the USMC for the same reason Socrates drank the hemlock. And since being so directly and harshly confronted with my own mortality at such a young age, I’ve not been able to shake the question, what is worth dying for? I study it in myself and I study it in others. We all die; we all know we will. That is boring in its ubiquity. What is fascinating is any choice that a man or woman may make which will cause him or her to give into it one breath early.
The Sioux, Red Cloud, is known for his actions rather than his words. But his actions led not just to a draw with the US Cavalry but to the only treaty ever signed between the United States of American and an indigenous nation where America gave up land. Winning it back and living was even better than dying for it.
From bestselling authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin comes the epic, untold story one of the most powerful Sioux warriors of all time, Red Cloud—now adapted for a younger audience!
“I have but a small spot of land left. The Great Spirit told me to keep it.” —Red Cloud
This young readers edition of the New York Times bestseller of the same name tells the long forgotten story of the powerful Oglala Lakota chief, Red Cloud. At the height of Red Cloud’s power the Sioux claimed control of vast parts of the west. But as the United States rapidly expanded,…
As a journalist, the Little Bighorn fascinates me because it has all the elements of a great story: larger-than-life characters, conflict, fighting against the odds, and mystery. I turned that fascination into research when I left newspapering to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Texas. I wrote a number of articles about press coverage of Custer and the Last Stand, and this research eventually led to two books, most recently a biography of Custer focusing on his artistic personality, especially his writing career. I’ve continued to explore the history of war reporting, always looking for topics that make good stories.
This dual-biography has the best description of Custer’s death ever written. Of course, no one knows exactly what happened, and that sense of mystery is one of the reasons it has become part of American lore. But master historian Stephen Ambrose uses the available evidence to speculate in a few beautifully written paragraphs what brought Custer to his legendary defeat and how he might have reacted to it in his last moments. The comparative stories of Custer and Crazy Horse leading to the battle is a fast-paced tale that will make you keep turning pages, forgetting you know how it will end. But the book is more than fine writing. The dual-biography format is the perfect vehicle for Ambrose to explain the clash of cultures that led to tragic conflict.
A New York Times bestseller from the author of Band of Brothers: The biography of two fighters forever linked by history and the battle at Little Bighorn.
On the sparkling morning of June 25, 1876, 611 men of the United States 7th Cavalry rode toward the banks of Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory, where three thousand Indians stood waiting for battle. The lives of two great warriors would soon be forever linked throughout history: Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, and General George Armstrong Custer. Both were men of aggression and supreme courage. Both became leaders in their…
My favorite fantasy novels tend to be rather complex. Winding plotlines, mysteriously interconnected characters, whimsical settings, and intricate, thoughtful worldbuilding combine to create immersive stories that stick in the mind like overworn folklore. Time travel or interworld travel lend additional layers of intrigue and mystery, forcing the inescapable contemplation of a more thrilling, alternate reality. And if it’s all packaged in artful, breathtaking prose that breeds full-color images, audible noises, indelible flavors, nose-crumpling odors, and tangible textures, I will happily lose myself in the pages, truly forgetting about the strictures of everyday life… at least until I get hungry and remember I need to consume more than books to survive.
As the kid who roamed the halls between classes with a book in my hand, I suspect Wraeththugave my nerd façade an impressive boost: technically an omnibus of three stories, Wraeththuis verythick—in both binding and plot. It follows the emotionally charged and mesmeric tales of a hermaphroditic race that is steadily subsuming the human one in a Darwinian battle for biological perfection. We follow the journeys of a few characters as they navigate the mental and physical growing pains inherent in joining a new race and the wild tribes and communities that have emerged in the wake of their hermaphroditic transformations. Dark, fascinating characters and cultures drive this story to its unusual climax when their true purposes are stunningly revealed.
Here at last in a single volume are all three of Constantine's Wraeththu trilogy: The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit, The Bewitchments of Love and Hate, and The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire.
In this powerful and elegant story set in a future Earth very different from our own, a new kind of human has evolved to challenge the dominion of Homo sapiens. This new breed is stronger, smarter, and far more beautiful than their parent race, and are endowed with psychic as well as physical gifts. They are destined to supplant humanity as we know it, but humanity won't…
I’m a historian who knows women have long lived not-sad lives without children. I’ve spent years researching the full and vibrant lives women without children lived throughout history—lives that often were only possible becausethey didn’t have the responsibilities of motherhood. I’m also a woman living a decidedly not-sad life without kids. And yet, in popular imagination, a woman without kids must be longing to be a mother or grieving the fact that she isn’t. I know firsthand that it can be isolating not to have kids. But in writing about the sheer variety of lives non-mothers lived in the past, I’m trying to show that we’re not alone.
Unlike Ivey’s other book The Snow Child, which grapples with the grief of infertility (a book I also love!), this book considers the opportunities a life without children allows for.
It opens with Lieutenant Colonel Allan Forrester as he prepares to lead an expedition into Alaska in 1885. His wife, Sophie, is an explorer in her own right and plans to accompany him—until they realize she’s pregnant and decide she has to stay behind.
Spoiler: Sophie miscarries and learns she will likely never be able to carry a baby to term. But this isn’t an endpoint for Sophie: instead, it sets her on a path toward professional and creative success, as well as love and happiness in her marriage.
We’re used to reading about how motherhood gives life meaning—I loved Ivey’s portrait of how nothaving kids can do the same.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARDS 2016.
Set in the Alaskan landscape that she brought to stunningly vivid life in THE SNOW CHILD (a Sunday Times bestseller, Richard and Judy pick and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Eowyn Ivey's TO THE BRIGHT EDGE OF THE WORLD is a breathtaking story of discovery set at the end of the nineteenth century, sure to appeal to fans of A PLACE CALLED WINTER.
'A clever, ambitious novel' The Sunday Times
'Persuasive and vivid... what could be a better beach read than an Arctic adventure?' Guardian
Greg Shed is a self-taught California illustrator specializing in Americana. In addition to commercial work and portraits, he has illustrated more than a dozen children’s books—several of which are about American history. A dedicated researcher, Greg has traveled from the Plymouth colony to the American prairie in search of authenticity and details. He has consulted with Native American craftsmen on the manufacture of native period attire. He is known for capturing golden light in his paintings, which often depict Native American cultures, wildlife, and landscapes.
Creation’s Journey ties actual native stories and beliefs with genuine artifacts from the vast collections of the National Museum of the American Indian. It provides a refreshing approach to our understanding of indigenous people’s utilitarian objects and how important they are in their daily lives. The photos in this book show the care for detail and craftsmanship that was pervasive in everyday Native American objects and clothing. It inspired me to commission native Americans to hand make the various costumes shown in my book.
Drawing on the vast collections of the National Museum of the American Indian, Creation’s Journey retells the story of native life from the Arctic to the Tierra del Fuego, and from childhood to old age.
