The Life and Death of Crazy Horse - Hardcover

Russell Freedman received the Newbery Medal for LINCOLN: A PHOTOBIOGRAPHY. He is also the recipient of three Newbery Honors, a National Humanities Medal, the Sibert Medal, the Orbis Pictus Award, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, and was selected to give the 2006 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture. Mr. Freedman lives in New York City and travels widely to research his books.

Grade 7 Up?An account of the Oglala Sioux leader's life, written with the attention to detail of a historian and the language of a storyteller. Freedman paints the famous warrior's story on a broad canvas, describing the forces (desire for farmland, gold, railroads) that brought increasing numbers of white settlers to the Indian lands. The divisions among and within the tribes in the face of the ever-growing problem are explained, as is Crazy Horse's adamant refusal to give in to either the threats or the treaty offers of the U.S. Army and the government. The climactic battle of the Little Big Horn is described and shown to be the last triumph of the Sioux before they were herded onto reservations, and the last great victory of Crazy Horse before he was pushed to surrender and face his own violent death. Judith St. George's Crazy Horse (Putnam's 1994) tells very much the same story but adds more details of Indian tribal life and customs. Freedman's book is richer in historical background. His focus is on the conflict of two cultures, and in that conflict Crazy Horse plays the role of the tragic hero, resisting the inevitable, fighting for his people's freedom even when he knew the cause was lost. An impressive bibliography is appended. Black-and-white reproductions of Indian pictographs from a collection of drawings by a Sioux artist (Crazy Horse's cousin) decorate and lend authenticity to Freedman's story-a story that is readable and balanced, and one that illuminates an important chapter of American history.?Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.