A review by clairebartholomew549
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

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.

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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