Thunder in the Mountains, Daniel Sharfstein
Thunder in the Mountains, Daniel Sharfstein
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Thunder in the Mountains
Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War

Author: Daniel Sharfstein

Narrator: Joe Barrett

Unabridged: 18 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/04/2017


Synopsis

Oliver Otis Howard thought he was a man of destiny. Chosen to lead the Freedmen's Bureau after the Civil War, the Union Army general was entrusted with the era's most crucial task: helping millions of former slaves claim the rights of citizens. He was energized by the belief that abolition and Reconstruction, the country's great struggles for liberty and equality, were God's plan for himself and the nation.

But as the nation's politics curdled in the 1870s, General Howard exiled himself from Washington, D.C., rejoined the army, and was sent across the continent to command forces in the Pacific Northwest. Shattered by Reconstruction's collapse, he assumed a new mission: forcing Native Americans to become Christian farmers on government reservations.

Howard's plans for redemption in the West ran headlong into the resistance of Chief Joseph, a young Nez Perce leader in northeastern Oregon who refused to leave his ancestral land. Claiming equal rights for Native Americans, Joseph was determined to find his way to the center of American power and convince the government to acknowledge his people's humanity and capacity for citizenship.

About Daniel Sharfstein

Daniel J. Sharfstein is a professor of law and history at Vanderbilt University and a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow. His first book, The Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America, received the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.


Reviews

I will be thinking about these two men for a long time. Chief Joseph and Oliver Otis Howard. Each had life goals of protecting their people, but had an appreciation for the rights of others and tried, within the limited social remedies of their time and place, to rectify inequities imposed on others......more

Daniel J. Sharfstein's new book, Thunder in the Mountains, offers an engrossing, full-blooded account of the Nez Perce War and its protagonists. Sharfstein's book evokes this most intriguing of Indian conflicts with narrative verve, recounting the Nez Perce's epic journey across the West, its consta......more

Goodreads review by Kurt

Having read at least 20 books on the subject of the Nez Perce people and the associated war of 1877, I feel like I am getting close to being an expert on the subject. Yet every new book on the subject, like this one, still manages to enlighten me further. This book focuses on the major players in the......more