I grew up in rural central Virginia the namesake of my African-American, family physician father, Dr. Robert C. Wesley and my educator mother, Anne Louise Reynolds. Becoming a physician seemed to be my destiny, which explains attending Yale Medical School. The Well was inspired by my lifelong concern over global health threats, originally regarding the threat of nuclear weapons, and propelled me toward pandemic inquiry. It was also a way to explore fundamental questions I struggled with: At the current state of mankind’s moral and ethical development, would a miraculous discovery controlled by very few lead to universal well-being or universal tyranny? I'm honored to submit my recommendations of books that combine suspense and spirituality.
The famous movie is extremely faithful to the book, although the book adds to the richness and depth of both plot and character.
In addition to heralding the transformation of spiritual awareness through empathetic identity with the indigenous peoples of the Lakota Nation, Dances with Wolves focuses upon the power of animal spirits and the lessons embedded in observing their behavior. Despite the title, the most prominent animal spirit is the Buffalo.
Ordered to hold an abandoned army post, John Dunbar found himself alone, beyond the edge of civilization. Thievery and survival soon forced him into the Indian camp, where he began a dangerous adventure that changed his life forever. Relive the adventure and beauty of the incredible movie, DANCES WITH WOLVES.
I’ve written seven books, all along the theme of adventure in one way or another, but my best-known work is that of my novels of the Ojibwe Indians. As a child, I grew up on a farm where my dad discovered scores of arrowheads and artifacts while plowing the fields. This was a deep revelation for me as to the extent of Indian culture and how little we know of its people. In my books, Windigo Moon and The Wolf and The Willow, I try to bring the world of the 1500s and its Native peoples to life.
Largely forgotten now, this was a huge bestseller when it was published in 1978. Based on stories drawn from the Winter Count of the Lakota Sioux (a record of pictographs depicting notable events of the year), this novel tells the story of two Sioux families living on the Great Plains prior to the arrival of white settlers.
Running 1009 pages, Hanta Yo is surely one of the most singular books in all of literature in that author Hill worked with a Sioux elder to translate her manuscript into the Siouan language and then back into English. I love the book because it offers a deep dive into the thoughts of the Sioux people and their way of life. Only at the end of the book do they encounter the troubles attendant to the white culture.
Partially based on fact, this multigenerational saga follows the lives of two Indian families, members of the Mahto band of the Teton Sioux, before the arrival of the white man
It dealt with an aspect of the settlement of the American West and the land grab from the Indians in a complete and thoughtful way and leads the author to question the narrative of her great grandparents' move to the West
Growing up, Rebecca Clarren only knew the major plot points of her immigrant family's origins. Her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, and their six children fled antisemitism in Russia and arrived in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, ultimately settling on a 160-acre homestead in South Dakota. Over the next few decades, despite tough years on a merciless prairie and multiple setbacks, the Sinykins became an American immigrant success story.
What none of Clarren's ancestors ever mentioned was that their land, the foundation for much of their wealth, had been cruelly taken from the Lakota by the United…
First of all, let it be known that I believe Crazy Horse to be one of the greatest persons to have lived on the North American continent. Naturally, I am drawn to any book about him.
Marshall, who is Lakota, has given us a very intimate look into Crazy Horse’s day-to-day life and his part as a humble member of his tribe.
He is not supernatural. Like all of us, he is a flawed human being, which makes his transcendence into heroism and glory all the more appealing. He was a man of duty and principle, yet he stole another man’s wife.
Anyone wishing to judge that transgression must first immerse him/herself into Crazy Horse’s time and situation. a near-impossible task. But to hear one Lakota (Marshall) talk about those times and that place and those individuals reminds us that we can never really know the full story of…
Drawing on vivid oral histories, Joseph M. Marshall’s intimate biography introduces a never-before-seen portrait of Crazy Horse and his Lakota community
Most of the world remembers Crazy Horse as a peerless warrior who brought the U.S. Army to its knees at the Battle of Little Bighorn. But to his fellow Lakota Indians, he was a dutiful son and humble fighting man who—with valor, spirit, respect, and unparalleled leadership—fought for his people’s land, livelihood, and honor. In this fascinating biography, Joseph M. Marshall, himself a Lakota Indian, creates a vibrant portrait of the man, his times, and his legacy.
I grew up in rural central Virginia the namesake of my African-American, family physician father, Dr. Robert C. Wesley and my educator mother, Anne Louise Reynolds. Becoming a physician seemed to be my destiny, which explains attending Yale Medical School. The Well was inspired by my lifelong concern over global health threats, originally regarding the threat of nuclear weapons, and propelled me toward pandemic inquiry. It was also a way to explore fundamental questions I struggled with: At the current state of mankind’s moral and ethical development, would a miraculous discovery controlled by very few lead to universal well-being or universal tyranny? I'm honored to submit my recommendations of books that combine suspense and spirituality.
This is a picture book published by National Geographic Kids, but equally applicable for reading by adults of our day.
It is a rendition of, perhaps, the most important Lakota sacred legend, relaying how the Great Spirit presented to the People of the Lakota Nation the Sacred Calf Peace Pipe with which to pray and communicate with the Universe.
I found this story particularly intriguing as the heroine is an animal spirit sent by the Universe, transformed from a White Buffalo calf into a beautiful spiritual Lakota woman.
She comes forward at a particularly troubled time for the Lakota Nation, forced into a traumatic migration from mid-western forest lands to the Great Plains by indigenous wars and European colonizing transgressions.The relationship of the tribes to sustenance provided by buffalo herds became the mainstay of the Lakota Nation.
Of all my choices, this story most directly depicts the impact of…
Paul Goble recounts the legend of the White Buffalo Woman who appears to her people offering them a peac e pipe, a gift that will give them hope and a new way to pra y to the Great Spirit. A spiritual celebration of life is ap parent on every page. '
History and video games have defined much of my life, so it’s no surprise I’m writing about both. I was born in Sweden and first encountered the Wild West through the Lucky Luke comic books (huge in Europe!), and they instilled in me a fascination with American history. I emigrated to the U.S. with my family at age 8 and misspent most of my adolescence playing video games. In college, I returned to my childhood passion for studying the past and earned a BA, MA, and PhD in American history. Since 2013, I’ve been a professor at the University of Tennessee. Red Dead’s History is my second book.
The iconic mythology of the American Wild West–of cowboys and Indians, sunset shootouts, one-horse frontier towns–wasn’t something created after this tumultuous period of history, but actually during it. And no single figure of the day did more to popularize these images than William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, a scout and showman who became one of the most famous people on earth in the late 1800s.
Historian Louis Warren's mind-blowing biography of Cody shows this larger-than-life figure as a bundle of contradictions. Here’s just one example. By our standards today, Cody’s glorification of white settlers pushing aside Native inhabitants would be revolting and racist. But the showman employed hundreds of Lakota Sioux in his Wild West show, even including Sitting Bull–the same man who had earlier defeated Custer at Little Bighorn.
William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was the most famous American of his age. He claimed to have worked for the Pony Express when only a boy and to have scouted for General George Custer. But what was his real story? And how did a frontiersman become a worldwide celebrity? In this prize-winning biography, acclaimed author Louis S. Warren explains not only how Cody exaggerated his real experience as an army scout and buffalo hunter, but also how that experience inspired him to create the gigantic, traveling spectacle known as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. A dazzling mix of Indians, cowboys,…
I am a lifelong history lover. I was the kid who hung around the feet of the elders, listening to their stories and learning about the past. That led to a deep interest in tracing family history, which has been a passion since about the age of ten. I still can get lost for hours finding ancestors or reading about their lives. That interest led me to a double major in college and I earned a Bachelor of Arts in both history and English with a two-year degree in journalism. I live a short distance from Oklahoma and one of my favorite pastimes is to go to powwows whenever possible.
This book blends the past with the present and takes the heroine Zora Hughes from New York City to South Dakota where she and John Iron Hawk. The story combines history with mystery and romance with suspense in an engaging way that kept me turning the pages to see what happened next.
Her visions brought her here. Her heart tells her to stay. But someone dangerous wants her gone…
Zora Hughes is haunted by someone else’s past. Plagued by dreams of her ancestor fleeing captivity, the former NYC fashion editor travels to South Dakota to uncover the truth. And until she can put her visions to rest, she won’t let anyone stand in her way… not even the handsome captain of the local tribal police.
John Iron Hawk is on a mission to clean up his reservation. Trying to raise a teenage daughter on his own while working to expose a corrupt…
Leave it to a Finnish historian to fundamentally challenge and transform the way Americans understand the native American experience, post-European
contact.
Beginning with The Comanche Empire and continuing with Lakota America,Hämäläinen, through exhaustive research, has forced us to see that not all native tribes were overwhelmed and decimated by the destructive force of European presence in North America.
Many tribes did succumb in this way, but there were those—like the Comanche and the Lakota Sioux—who took advantage of the disruptive force of European conquest to fashion ways of life and tribal organization that allowed them to thrive for a century or more, in spite of, or perhaps because, of the chaos occasioned by European settlement.
Trust me, you will not see European/Native American relations the same way ever again.
The first comprehensive history of the Lakota Indians and their profound role in shaping America's history
Named One of the New York Times Critics' Top Books of 2019 * Named One of the 10 Best History Books of 2019 by Smithsonian Magazine * Winner of the MPIBA Reading the West Book Award for Narrative Nonfiction
"All nations deserve to have their stories told with this degree of attentiveness."-Parul Sehgal, New York Times
"A brilliant, bold, gripping history."-Simon Sebag Montefiore, London Evening Standard, Best Books of 2019
Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull are iconic figures in the American imagination,…
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.
I am captivated by memoirs that shed light on the deeper life experiences of their authors. My curiosity about inner life compelled me to learn about the psychological essence of memoir writers, resulting in my writing a memoir from an in-depth psychological perspective. My curiosity also led me to become a psychotherapist, which helped me better navigate dark and uncertain waters with my clients. By probing the inner psychological dynamics of such memoirs, I learned more about myself and became a writer with rare psychological insight. Such illumination served to ignite my very soul. My passion is fueled by tapping the mysteries of what lies within us all.
I was deeply moved by this translated account of the Oglala Lakota holy man, which vividly depicts the tragic history of American indigenous tribes. I was deeply moved by Black Elk's compelling vision for his people, calling upon ancestors and the Divine Spirit for protection and healing.
Despite the simplicity and humanity in his voice, I struggled to reconcile Black Elk’s generosity of spirit with the heartless colonization and cultural extinction of the Lakota Sioux and other tribes. The intertwined fates of the buffalo and Indigenous tribes left me filled with profound sadness and heartache.
Black Elk's story opened my eyes to the ancient spiritual world of his people and the overwhelming injustice they had to endure. I am forever grateful.
More than one million copies sold
2017 One Book One Nebraska selection
"An American classic."-Western Historical Quarterly
Black Elk Speaks, the story of the Oglala Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863-1950) and his people during momentous twilight years of the nineteenth century, offers readers much more than a precious glimpse of a vanished time. Black Elk's searing visions of the unity of humanity and Earth, conveyed by John G. Neihardt, have made this book a classic that crosses multiple genres. Whether appreciated as the poignant tale of a Lakota life, as a history of a Native nation, or…
