The Heart of Everything That Is / by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

The full title of this work is a clue to it’s faults: The Heart of Everything That Is: the Untold Story of Red Cloud, an American Legend. The story of Red Cloud has hardly been “untold,” and the authors, who are not professional historians, make a great deal of presumption in claiming indirectly that this book is somehow groundbreaking in its presentation.  It is true that Hollywood has yet to tackle the story of Fort Phil Kearny and the epic siege of the place led by Red Cloud and his warriors, but plenty of historical narratives have looked at the story and, in some cases, surpassed this one in accuracy.  Red Cloud is certainly worthy of a retelling of his victory over the United States, however, and this one reads as smooth as butter.  Readers will gain the important background information on how the Lakota people were consistently pushed and prodded by the Euro-American advancement across the great plains, and will understandably sympathize with their doomed resistance.  White actors in this drama are not painted in two-dimensional caricature, however, and the authors spend a good deal of time explaining the cultural differences between the opposing forces to explain the inevitable conflict.  What irritated me most in reading the book was the author’s insistence in using tired, and questionable, secondary sources on such episodes as the Nelson Story cattle drive to Montana without subjecting them to proper historical criticism.  But general readers will find much to admire in this book, and it is a good introduction to the tragedy of what has been rightfully called America’s longest war; the subjugation of its native people from the seventeenth century through 1890.

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An important story that needs to be told. Thanks for the great review.

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