According to the Osage American Indians, when May’s full moon shines and the Earth warms, taller plants overtake April’s tiny flowers, “stealing their light and water” until they die. This is bestselling author and journalist David Grann’s fitting metaphor for what befell the Osages in Oklahoma, beginning in May 1921. His thoroughly researched account, Killers of the Flower Moon, is a chilling tale of unfettered greed, cruel prejudice and corrupted justice.

When the U.S. government drove the Osages from their territory in Kansas to northeastern Oklahoma, no one knew about the rich oil deposits below the surface of their new land. Soon the oil would make the Osages incredibly rich—and their white neighbors incredibly jealous.

Since only a tribe-enrolled Osage could claim the profits from their allotted lands, a law was conveniently passed requiring that guardians be appointed to “manage” the Osages’ considerable wealth. The fraud and treachery that ensued, referred to as “Indian business” by anyone involved, deprived the Osage people of their money, property and even their lives. Families victimized by shootings, bombings and poisonings found no justice at the hands of corrupt lawmen, bankers and judges.

However, the travesties and tragedies unfolding in Oklahoma coincided with the rise of the ambitious J. Edgar Hoover and the new Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was the detective work of agent and former Texas Ranger Tom White that helped Hoover transform the formerly inept and ridiculed FBI into a powerful agency. The FBI was finally able to deliver a measure of justice to the Osages, albeit too late for many victims.

Grann’s tale could have ended there and served its purpose well, revealing this “Reign of Terror” that was, until now, largely forgotten by most. But he goes on to reveal the many unresolved murders that preceded 1921 and the ongoing disenfranchisement of present-day Osages, adding to the sheer power of truth in Killers of the Flower Moon.

The Nez Perce War of 1877 was fought over a four-month period between the U.S. Army and various bands of Nez Perce Indians along a zigzagging, 1,200-mile course through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and into Montana almost to the Canadian border. Neither side wanted the war, but both were relentless in its prosecution and equally given to committing atrocities. Ironically, the conflict's leaders—General Oliver Otis Howard and Chief Joseph—would, in the years afterward, become close, if wary, acquaintances and crucial to the heightening of each other's national reputation.

Sharfstein, a professor of law and history at Vanderbilt, begins his panoramic narrative with Howard losing his right arm to Confederate gunfire in the early days of the Civil War. Still, Howard continued to lead his troops and achieve rank. After the war, he was appointed head of the Freedmen's Bureau and charged with integrating the newly freed slaves into full citizenship. In that capacity, he established the university that still bears his name. But the resistance of white Southerners and their political allies stifled his most ambitious aims and contributed to his growing tendency to rationalize his failures, both bureaucratically and on the battle field.

Chief Joseph, as Sharfstein explains, was less a war leader than a diplomat. Long before and after the 1877 war, he argued incessantly for his tribe to be allowed to occupy its Oregon homeland rather than be harried to a reservation. However, the waves of settlers seeking to open up the resource-rich Northwest simply washed over him. Sharfstein paints his pictures of this beautiful and terrifying region on a canvas that stretches from daunting inland mountains to bustling seacoast towns.

Deftly woven into the story are portraits of such fascinating figures as Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who served as Howard's aide and later became a political radical, and the fierce warrior Yellow Wolf, whose remembered accounts of battle provide Sharfstein with some of his most chilling descriptions.

Tales of the Old West seem to improve with age, as award-winning historian Tom Clavin (The Heart of Everything That Is) demonstrates in his lively new book, Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West. Revisiting the capital of the wild frontier, Clavin focuses on Dodge City’s heyday—the 1870s and 1880s—and brings into sharp focus stories that long ago acquired the sepia tone of antiquity. 

Established as a military settlement, Dodge City developed into a frisky cowtown with a bustling stockyard and railroad terminus. Set on the plains in southwestern Kansas, it was an inevitable stop for buffalo hunters, businessmen, miners, guns-for-hire, cowpokes and other folks traveling westward. Dodge City, Clavin says, “came to symbolize both the American West and a nation seeking to fulfill its manifest destiny.” 

Because it attracted gunslingers of every breed (Dirty Sock Jack, Cold Chuck Johnny and Dynamite Sam, to name a few), extra-vigilant lawmen were needed to keep the peace. Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp were tailor-made for the task. 

Clavin’s storytelling skills shine as he chronicles the personal histories of the now-mythical pair, tracing the years of their reign in the West and providing an intriguing look at their comradeship. He delivers plenty of quick-draw drama—with appearances from Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James and others—in detailed accounts of the shootouts and duels that were the order of the day. 

Clavin’s bold narrative of life in a nation still coming of age provides a shot of good old-fashioned escapism. Dodge City “was a reservoir of tall tales,” he says, “yet many of the facts are equally if not more fascinating.” This rip-roarin’ read proves he’s right.

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

As Civil War battles go, the Battle of Hampton Roads isn’t among the most memorable. Gettysburg, Bull Run, Antietam and Fredericksburg usually take top billing. But author Richard Snow argues in Iron Dawn that Hampton Roads was among the most significant Civil War conflicts because it was the first sea battle between ironclad ships: the Merrimack and the Monitor. The battle lasted only three hours and ended in a draw. But because the two ironclads proved battleworthy, it signaled the dawn of the modern navy and the end to wooden shipbuilding. “Many naval battles . . . have bent the course of history in hours or even minutes,” Snow writes. “But none has fomented in a short day’s work a whole new kind of warfare, has in one noisy morning made an ancient tradition obsolete.”

By the time the two boats met on March 9, 1862, on Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, the Merrimack had already destroyed two wooden Union ships and had its sights set on a third. The Monitor arrived to hold the Merrimack in check. The two ironclads fired on each other for several hours, with little damage and few casualties, before they both retreated to safer waters.

The battle was evidence, Snow says, that many of the most important technologies of the Civil War came from the navy, not the army.

Iron Dawn is a worthy read not only for serious Civil War buffs, but also for those who appreciate how ingenuity forever changed the way the military does battle on the sea.

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Our understanding of history does not always match the documented evidence. The American Revolution was not as orderly and restrained as we sometimes think. American colonists who remained loyal to the king and those wanting to break away often treated one another inhumanely. A plundered farm, the target of small raiding parties, was more common than a battle charge. After the war, 60,000 Loyalists became refugees. 

In his excellent American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor gives us a wide-ranging view that draws attention to the multiple empires clashing for land and power. The result, based on the latest scholarship, is a fresh and authoritative interpretation of the complex series of events that led up to the war and the many problems the new nation faced in the years immediately following.

Taylor emphasizes the crucial role played by the western expansion of settlers despite British efforts to restrict them. This expansion is essential to understanding both the causes of the revolution and the republic’s growth after the war. Between 1754 and 1763, the British and their colonists claimed the West as far as the Mississippi River. The colonists already here expected to share the fruits of victory. When that did not happen—instead, the British tried to protect Indian lands from settler expansion, made unexpected concessions to Francophone and Catholic subjects in Canada, and then imposed new taxes on the colonists—dissatisfaction began to stir.

Taylor’s focus on a larger area of North America gives us a more realistic understanding of the struggle. He shows “that relations with the native peoples were pivotal in shaping every colonial region and in framing the competition of rival empires. Enslaved Africans now appear as central, rather than peripheral, to building the colonies that overtly celebrated liberty.” 

Near the war’s end, black soldiers were one-tenth of the Continental Army. Women were also crucial to the Patriot war effort, running the farms and shops, keeping families together. Nevertheless, Patriots defended freedom for white men while continuing their dominance over Indians and enslaved blacks.

Taylor’s masterful account is consistently compelling whatever the focus—on diplomacy, religion, warfare, culture or slavery. Everyone interested in early American history should read this book.

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The African slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean existed for centuries before the English colonization of what came to be called New England. By the 17th century, when the English joined the race for land and resources, merchants, traders, religious leaders and the crown were quite willing to use slaves (Indians and Africans) to help achieve their objectives. In her provocative and compelling New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America, historian Wendy Warren asks if the early colonists disapproved of slavery. Her answer, deeply researched and well documented, is a “resounding no.”

Slavery, as Warren shows in significant detail, was part of life in America’s English colonies from the very beginning. Puritan theology was not opposed to it, nor was Anglicanism. Puritans, with the authority of the Bible, believed in a hierarchical system where those who were “perpetually” enslaved, Africans and Indians, were the lowest of all. Warren’s research demonstrates conclusively that the realization of John Winthrop’s vision of “a city on a hill” was possible only because of a flourishing economic system joining the West Indies and New England with slavery at its center. Leading colonists owned and sold slaves and wrote about slavery. The author

s documentation includes wills, probate records, ledgers and personal correspondence. She shines a light on many heartbreaking stories of enslaved individuals whose travails have remained largely untold in histories of the period.

Warren brilliantly traces in detail the development of the system from 1638, when the first documented shipment of enslaved Africans arrived in New England, until the publication of Samuel Sewall’s The Selling of Joseph, the first New England anti-slavery tract, in 1700. Although there were many other aspects of the arrangement, including family connections, the basic situation was as follows: West Indies sugar meant great wealth for owners, but it was necessary for the New Englanders to grow crops and catch fish to be sent to the West Indies where English colonists there, with the profits from sugar, bought what they needed to sustain themselves and the slaves who produced the sugar. A large part of the early New England economy, perhaps as much as 40 percent, had direct ties to the West Indies sugar plantations. If enough people had said no, the system might have ended but they did not. Enslaved people worked in homes in New England but usually no more than one or two at a time. Hostile Indian slaves were sent to the West Indies where harsh working conditions often amounted to a death sentence.

The first legal approach to chattel slavery in North America, the Body of Liberties, came from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1641. The legislation made the perpetual bondage of Indians and Africans lawful. The Connecticut Code of Laws of 1646, published in 1650, made reference to Indian and African slavery as legitimate punishment for crimes.

This groundbreaking book gives us a new interpretation of the early colonists with regard to slavery, showing that it was part of New England life from the beginning. It also recounts the realities of settlement, violence and Indian removal, and how slavery became an accepted part of life in the colonies. Authoritative, extremely well written and humane, this important book presents a challenge to earlier accounts of the earliest English colonists in New England.

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, May 2016

The state of play in the American Revolution, late 1777: One famous general has lost every significant battle he’s been in, often because he couldn’t curb his aggressive instincts. Another famous general has won several major victories, including one that will prove to be the most pivotal of the war.

The initially unsuccessful general was George Washington; the winner was Benedict Arnold. We know how it turned out—in the coming years, Washington became First in the Hearts of His Countrymen and Arnold became First Traitor. But how on earth did it happen? Nathaniel Philbrick, author of the bestsellers In the Heart of the Sea and Mayflower, tackles this fascinating reversal of fortune in Valiant Ambition, an engrossing narrative of the war’s most difficult years.

In Philbrick’s view, both men were indeed valiant and ambitious, but their fundamental characters were diametrically opposed. Washington had a true moral compass, a long horizon and the capacity to learn from his mistakes. Arnold was impetuous, greedy and consumed with self-regard. When Congress mistreated Arnold, he became enraged, started smuggling contraband and ultimately sold out to the British. 

The British unwittingly helped both men to their fates. The dysfunction of the infant American government was nothing compared to the internecine warfare of the British generals, who spent much of their energy scheming against each other. General William Howe beat Washington in every pitched battle they fought, but his hatred for his compatriot General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne exceeded his desire to win what he probably considered a pointless colonial dust-up. Perhaps Philbrick’s least favorite character is the British spy Major John André, the ruthless charmer whose careless misstep led to Arnold’s downfall and Andre’s own execution.

Philbrick argues that the quarrelsome, divided Americans needed Arnold’s perfidy as much as they did Washington’s greatness to unify their new nation. He pushes aside the patriotic myth to unveil the war’s messy reality—and it’s still a rousing adventure.

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Christopher Columbus, honored as the discoverer of America and celebrated annually with a national holiday, was a slaver. This and other grim facts about the trail of human trafficking throughout history are likely not learned in school. In The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America, Andrés Reséndez, a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, offers a compelling account of a huge, tragic, missing piece of history.

From the Caribbean to South America to Mexico, then north to the West and Southwest of America, colonization, conquest and greed spawned the need for cheap labor and servitude. Long before the African slave trade brought captives to America, European explorers and conquerors claimed native men, women and children for profit-making purposes. Slavery was “first and foremost a business involving investors, soldiers, agents, and powerful officials.” In what is now Peru and Bolivia, for example, a “state-directed” labor force for silver mines “began in 1573 and remained in operation for 250 years.” Enslaved workers were brutally treated and subjected to diseases like smallpox, for which they had neither immunity nor remedy.

Spain’s monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, figure prominently in an equally long history of reformers, predecessors to the abolitionists. They shared a conviction that any form of slavery was morally wrong—but faced difficulty in converting those who profited from it. Owners of Indian slaves, distantly removed from their royal rulers or, as in America, from political deciders back east, could ignore demands for reform. When the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was enacted in 1865, legally abolishing slavery throughout the U.S., Southern laws like the Black Codes continued to thwart freedom for African slaves. In the Southwest and West, where Indian tribes went on enslaving each other, warring over horses, guns and territory, laws made in Washington meant little.

Today, with the complex and myriad effects of globalization frequently in the news, human trafficking has managed to endure. The Other Slavery both reminds and cautions: Man’s inhumanity to man is still making history.

Priscilla Kipp is a writer in Townsend, Massachusetts.

Thomas Jefferson was arguably the central figure in the early American republic. No one contributed more to the formation of the country or had more sustained influence. But how did he think of himself and what he was doing in the world? How did he want others to perceive him?

The authoritative and eminently readable “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs” is an excellent place to look for answers to these questions. Annette Gordon-Reed, who received the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for her groundbreaking The Hemingses of Monticello, and Peter S. Onuf, the country’s leading Jefferson scholar, delve deeply into the development and evolution of Jefferson’s thought. They give careful attention to both his public and private writing to help define his attitudes about many subjects, including the role of women. 

Jefferson came to view the family as a microcosm of the nation. He may have idealized home so much because, as a committed patriot and skilled politician, he was so often away from his own. Born into the top of Virginia’s social stratum, he enjoyed extraordinary advantages. At the same time, perhaps more than any of the other founders, he wrestled with the moral and practical implications of long-term relationships among Native Americans, enslaved people and white settlers. He came to accept the concept of inevitable human progress, and he believed future generations would resolve these problems. 

A particular highlight of the book is a discussion of the critical importance of the years during his diplomatic service in France, when his slaves, James and Sally Hemings, lived with him. When he returned home, Jefferson’s attitude toward slavery changed. He continued to see it as an evil, but not as the main degrading foundation of his country’s way of life. At the same time, Jefferson insisted publicly that patriotism began at home. The bonds that sustained family life, he thought, were the only stable and enduring foundation for republican self-government.

The authors are often asked, “What is left to be known and said about Thomas Jefferson?” Their reply is “Everything.” This stimulating book is a valuable guide to our most intriguing founding father.

This article was originally published in the April 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Who knew that FDR was a budding oologist at age 10? Not only did he collect birds’ eggs and nests (oology), the young Franklin Roosevelt (burdened during his Groton years with the nickname “Feather Duster”) was a fairly serious ornithologist and naturalist. These lifelong pursuits, along with a deep and abiding appreciation for his Hudson River home, would help shape and define his conservation legacy during his presidency.

Bestselling author and Rice University history professor Douglas Brinkley is no stranger to the Roosevelt family. His 2009 book, The Wilderness Warrior, celebrated Theodore Roosevelt’s love of the outdoors and his vision to protect more than 200 million acres of wild America. In this new work, Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America, Brinkley brings his masterful research and storytelling skills to the life of Theodore’s cousin Franklin. But this is not simply a narrow examination of one aspect of the president’s interest in the outdoors. Instead, Brinkley uses FDR’s love of the natural world as a biographical lens, offering readers new insights into this complex national figure.

From Roosevelt’s boyhood in the Hudson, Brinkley traces his marriage to Eleanor and subsequent political career. He explores New Deal Conservation (1933-1938) and the ways in which Roosevelt married conservation goals to economic policy to combat the unemployment of the Great Depression. Anyone who has hiked on an old trail has probably been reminded of the enduring legacy of the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps, which as Brinkley reveals, had a dual purpose. “If the primary selling point to Congress was work relief, the long-term vision was nothing less than to heal the wounded American earth.”

Roosevelt, asserts Brinkley, was nothing less than “America’s landscape planner.” The president made his mark in a variety of ways, from his efforts to establish local and regional park systems, to his campaigns to preserve national resources, working alongside leading environmental visionaries of the era.

Even if you’ve read other Roosevelt biographies or seen Ken Burns’ documentary, The Roosevelts, there are surprising insights in store here, as Brinkley masterfully chronicles Roosevelt’s strengths and weaknesses and the progress of the environmental movement itself during his years in office. For anyone interested in the history of our natural treasures, or who thought they understood the Roosevelt presidency, Rightful Heritage is a must read.

There is nothing so compelling as history well told, whether in print or on film. And viewers who were engrossed by Ken Burns’ recent PBS series on the Roosevelts will find Jay Winik’s new book on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History, especially appealing. Winik, who has written about America’s founding (The Great Upheaval) and the Civil War (April 1865), brings his considerable gifts as a storyteller and a talented historian to this new work exploring the pivotal year of Roosevelt’s presidency and of World War II. 

Winik seamlessly sets FDR the man, beset by physical limitations and increasingly bad health, within the context of the complex, high-stakes international challenges he faced. In the spring of 1944, Winik shows us a Roosevelt exhausted and ill, plagued by headaches and a hacking cough—a man who sometimes fell asleep in the midst of dictation. 

Yet Roosevelt was also a “resolute and clear-sighted wartime leader,” a leader unwilling to accept defeat when, as it did during that crucial year, the entire history of civilization seemed to hang in the balance. Looking back, the defeat of Hitler and the success of the Normandy invasion may seem inevitable, but at the time this was far from the case. At the same time, Winik explores in detail the implications of the Roosevelt administration’s decision not to launch military strikes against Nazi death camps. 

As the 75th anniversary of America’s entry into World War II approaches next year, Winik has given us a chance to move beyond simple commemoration to a fuller understanding of the era.

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The residents of the Gulf Coast in the 1770s and 1780s saw the American Revolution differently from the rebelling colonists in the north. Initially they regarded it as another imperial war, fought for land and treasure. Eventually, though, the Gulf Coast became the only site of Revolutionary War battles that was outside the rebelling colonies but later became part of the U.S. The area had a diverse population that included the British, French and Spanish, people of African descent, and Native Americans. Most of these groups had no interest in Britain’s attempt to tax and regulate its colonists, nor to rebel. When war began to affect them, however, it brought both opportunities and dangers, and many used it to advance their own ambitions for themselves, their families and their nations.

In her richly detailed and riveting Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution, historian Kathleen DuVal explores what the war and its aftermath meant in the lives of eight individuals who lived in an area with many competing interests. The most important long-term need for the region was more land for the steadily expanding population. In the short term, decisions about whether to fight, which side to support and how to secure rights and property became major concerns.

Independence was not a universal goal in the 18th century. For most people on the continent, advantageous interdependence was a more realistic goal. On the Gulf Coast, only Native-American leaders fought for sovereign independence. But, they, too, operated through a complicated arrangement of interdependencies. By winning the American Revolution, the rebels advanced their own varieties of independence at the expense of others, primarily Native Americans whose ancestors had lived on the land for centuries and millions of enslaved Africans whose labor helped to fuel a new industrial economy. Despite their land being fought over by others, the Indians were not invited either to the meetings that led to the Treaty of Paris officially ending the war or to join the union of other sovereign states.

The war sometimes gave chances for individual liberties and even freedom from slavery but no side proposed the abolition of slavery. The status of white women did not change for the better and often got worse. Life-changing decisions continued to be made by men. Although nearly half of the North American population was female, few women are mentioned in accounts of war and building a nation.

DuVal skillfully weaves the lives of her main characters into the larger themes. The vast majority of the land in the region belonged to the Indians. Success or defeat for the British, French, Spanish or Indian nations depended on the decisions of Native Americans to fight or refuse to do so. Two prominent Indian leaders are profiled in the book. One is Payamataha, a leader of the Chickasaws, who played a key role in such decisions. A combination of diplomat and spiritual leader, he sought independence for his people through a pragmatic course of peaceful coexistence. During the 1760s and 1770s he led his nation to make peace with a sizable group of other Indian nations, all of them long-time enemies of his people. Forces beyond his control created problems later on. The other Indian leader discussed in detail is Alexander McGillivray, of Creek-Scots ancestry, who supported the British in the war. In its aftermath, he promoted Creek independence and worked toward a confederation of Indian nations committed to protecting their land.

There is also Oliver Pollock, a British subject and wealthy merchant in Havana and New Orleans, who was able to do business easily with the Spanish and French. The Continental Congress appointed him its commercial agent in Louisiana, and he invested virtually all of his fortune with the rebels in the American Revolution. His wife, Margaret O’Brien, saw her life change for the worse because of her husband’s decision.

James Bryce and Isabella Chrystie were firmly on the side of the British. Living in West Florida, they realized that their independence depended on the connections, infrastructure and order provided by the British Empire. They understood that they received much more in services from the crown than they paid to it.

Petit Jean was enslaved but played a more autonomous role than most slaves in post-1763 Mobile. He was a cattle driver who had a deep knowledge of the landscape around him and was entrusted with great responsibility. He could have run away but had he been caught, the consequences would have been severe. The slaves’ loyalty was not to their masters or a government but working for their own families’ interest in the whites’ war of rebellion.

Amand Broussard was a rancher in Louisiana whose family had been expelled from Acadia (now the northern coast of Canada) by the British. Although the Acadians had prospered in part from selling their grain to the British in West Florida, they had not forgotten the harsh treatment they had received by the British.

In this important book, the author writes “Striving for American independence really meant striving for the right balance of independence and dependence. Native Americans and European empires struck different balances and both lost in North America.” How this happened is a complex story and DuVal tells it magnificently.