Reviews tagging 'War'

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne

8 reviews

lduquette's review against another edition

Explicit white male bias

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Racism, Rape, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Trafficking, Murder, and War

clairebartholomew549's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

4.0

This book is brutal, gory, and completely depressing. It chronicles the aggressive settlement of native lands by white people, the political violence the tribes enacted in response and also sua sponte, and the slow vanishing of native culture. It's compulsively readable - Gwynne goes back and forth between decades, smartly telling history through the lens of different actors - and incredibly informative. This is a period of U.S. history that I don't know much about (which is obviously intentional by the education system) and it was all very interesting.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Cannibalism

Minor: Addiction

jeddicat's review against another edition

Graphic with horrific violence against women.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Genocide, Gore, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

yotchki's review against another edition

challenging dark informative tense medium-paced

5.0

Historical non-fiction that reads like a novel. As brutal and unforgiving as it’s setting

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Xenophobia, and War

Moderate: Gore and Sexual violence

lareads36's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective medium-paced

3.75

I can see how this popular culture book could reach more people than historical monographs. 

Overall the author recounts and makes the history come alive. At one point though, I felt he was renunerating atrocities on both sides too much.

the sixth impaled baby didn't have as much impact as the first five.

 

I will say however, I had been led to believe this was less history and more fiction. Inside not feeling that way reading it. Given my research, he glossed over a couple of points but didn't embellish. He does mention that Goodnight was the sole proprietor of the canyon when we know he was a part owner with financial backing from JA. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Rape, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Murder, Colonisation, and War

brandiereadsbooks's review against another edition

adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Gun violence, Rape, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Kidnapping, Murder, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

acunkle's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional informative tense medium-paced

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Sexual violence, Torture, Murder, and War

pirateenthusiast's review against another edition

1.25

A well researched book. I learned a lot, but this is where the positives end. The language used in this book is repeatedly and horrendously racist. I'm not sure if this was the authors intention or not, but he portrays the Comanches and Native Americans as a whole as "backward stone age hunters". Gwynne claims to be providing an unbiased neutral book that shows both sides in an accurate light. He certainly succeeds in not straying away from the violence of the Comanches with his brutal and graphic descriptions, yet when he describes the violence of the other side, the terms are much more vague, giving the reader the wrong impression. Here is a list of words used in this book and the frequency that they appeared.

Native: 32
Indian(s): 1,177
Savage: 28
Primitive: 19
Redskin: 3
Squaw: 25
Indigenous: 1

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Gore, Racism, Torture, Violence, Kidnapping, Colonisation, and War

Moderate: Racial slurs and Rape

Minor: Animal death