Dee Brown Books In Order

Wave High the Banner

Reissued for the first time since its original publication in 1943, Wave High the Banner is the little known first novel by Dee Brown, one of the most prolific, influential, and popular writers on the American frontier experience. Brown skillfully weaves fact and fiction to recount Crockett’s earliest apprenticeships and first loves, his marriage to his childhood sweetheart, his numerous moves ever deeper into the wilderness, his turbulent years as a frontier politician in Tennessee, and his part in the doomed and bloody defense of the Alamo in Texas. Brown re creates a complex and richly textured Crockett who was a soldier, lover, husband, father, widower, Indian fighter, hunter, humorist, local politician, and champion of the common people, both white and Indian. Historian Paul Andrew Hutton discusses the significance of Wave High the Banner in the Crockett literature and reviews the wide ranging, distinguished career of Dee Brown.

The Way to Bright Star

Ben Butterfield, ex circus performer, is living out his days in a small backwater town. He spends much of his time dwelling on the past, pondering his glory days with the circus, and his first grand adventure an odyssey across Missouri and Illinois to Bright Star, Indiana, during the Civil War. It was a journey that laid the groundwork for the man he would become, and on which he got to know the two people who meant the world to him, and still do.

In 1862, Ben sets out to help Johnny Hawkes, a resourceful Texican, drive two camels to the farm home of a Yankee officer who has taken possession of the desert beasts as contraband of war. But when Johnny is imprisoned by the Yankees and charged with horse theft, it is up to Ben to complete the task without his friend and mentor. On the threshold of manhood, he has only the help of a young girl, nicknamed Princess, who spends most of the time masquerading as a boy to avoid drawing unwanted attention. Johnny and Princess must stand together and persevere against the odds if they are to overcome every obstacle placed before them on the winding way to Bright Star.

A magnificent tour of 1860s heartland America, The Way to Bright Star is a grand coming of age novel, in the tradition of Huckleberry Finn, and destined to become an American classic.

Dee Brown’s Folktales of the Native American

This comprehensive collection of Native American folklore draws on a unique oral tradition, illuminating for students the very roots of Native American culture. Gathered from numerous tribes Seneca, Hopi, Navaho, Creek, Cheyenne, Cherokee, and Blackfoot these thirty six stories, passed down through generations, are narrated by Dee Brown as they might be told around a campfire today. Updated for the modern reader, these tales capture the true spirit and flavor of Native American Mythology.

With a new preface written by the author especially for this edition and attractive line illustrations by Native American Louis Mofsie, this unique is essential reading for a new generation of students interested in Native American culture and history, mythology and folklore, and cultural history.

Best of Dee Brown’s West

Dee Brown, the foremost popular historian of the American West, has been exploring its ‘true history’ for over 50 years in some 30 books and dozens of historical articles. Known for his forceful and well documented narratives, Dee Brown changed the way we look at the West. Without a political or ideological axe to grind, he has stripped away familiar stereotypes and romanticised images, he has always shown us the Old West as it really was. The 25 works in this collection span 100 years of history. Brown includes pieces on noted figures such as Lewis and Clark and Geronimo, stories of the Pony Express riders, longhorn ranchers and cowboys, and women who were brought to the West to marry miners and ranchers. He offers accounts of the Trail of Tears, the Santa Fe Trail, western settlement, the Plains Indians, war and peace between whites and Indians, and an assortment of intrigues, crimes, and scandals. Containing some of Brown’s best work, this book will captivate readers with an interest in a perennially fascinating chapter of our history.

Dee Brown’s Civil War Anthology

In this collection America’s most distinguished popular historian has turned his attention to the tragic struggle that came close to destroying the American nation. Drawing on letters and diaries as well as military reports, Brown recreates the human face of the conflict and includes accounts of the most important battles fought west of the Mississippi. With his characteristic genius for bringing history to life, he tells of daring raids, brilliant strategies, tragic miscalculations, and pigheaded blunders; times for both sides when everything that could go wrong, did; and times when extraordinary good luck seemed to suggest divine intervention. Brown describes the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, termed ‘the Bull run of the West’; the Battle of Westport, the biggest engagement fought west of the Mississippi; and other battles some that produced unexpected results. He recounts the exploits of John Morgan and Benjamin Grierson, cavalry commanders on opposite sides who were famous for their expeditions deep into enemy territory. Brown includes the personal stories of commanders and foot soldiers who describe the unspeakable horrors they witnessed, as well as the astonishing heroism and gallantry of soldiers on both sides, and moments when compassion for the enemy replaced the murderous rage of battle. Among the most remarkable stories are Brown’s accounts of a conspiracy to free Confederate prisoners who were then to form a Northwestern Confederacy, a poignant love story told in letters, and the tragic tale of the final collapse of the Confederacy and capture of Jefferson Davis. Combining military history and some of the most unusual and dramatic events of the Civil War, this collection ofshort pieces will be welcomed by Dee Brown’s many admirers and by all readers with an interest in the great sagas of the Civil War and the American West.

The Gentle Tamers

All aspects of western feminine life, which include a good deal about the western male, are covered in this lively, informal but soundly factual account of the women who built the West. Among those whose stories are included are Elizabeth Custer; Lola Montez, Ann Eliza Young, Josephine Meeker, Carry Nation, Esther Morris, and Virginia Reed.

Fort Phil Kearny

The Fetterman Massacre occurred on December 21, 1866, at Fort Phil Kearny, a small outpost in the foothills of the Big Horns. The second battle in American history from which came no survivors, it became a cause c l bre and was the subject of a congressional investigation.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Immediately recognized as a revelatory and enormously controversial book since its first publication in 1971, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is universally recognized as one of those rare books that forever changes the way its subject is perceived. Now repackaged with a new introduction from bestselling author Hampton Sides to coincide with a major HBO dramatic film of the book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown’s classic, eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold over four million copies in multiple editions and has been translated into seventeen languages. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the series of battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them and their people demoralized and decimated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was won, and lost. It tells a story that should not be forgotten, and so must be retold from time to time.

Showdown At Little Big Horn

On Sunday afternoon, June 25, 1876, Gen. George Custer and 264 members of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry engaged more than 3,000 warriors of the Lakota Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne nations and were killed in the ensuing battle. Acclaimed historian Dee Brown traces the events of that day and of the weeks before, through the eyes and ears of seventeen participants from both sides, including Natives, scouts, soldiers, and civilians. Why did Custer divide his forces? Why did he not take his regiment’s Gatling guns? Why did he expect Sitting Bull to surrender without a fight? How did Sitting Bull s vision at the sun dance on the Rosebud foretell the occasion and the outcome of the battle? How did war chiefs Crazy Horse and Gall take advantage of Custer s tactical errors? And why did they preserve Custer s body from mutilation?Showdown At Little Big Horn answers these and other questions, telling the story of the fight from many points of view, based on reports, diaries, letters, and testimony of the participants themselves. Together the accounts provide a gripping narrative of a punitive expedition gone badly awry and an assemblage of Native peoples who forestalled for a while the army s domination of the northern plains.

Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow

From the author of the best selling Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown’s classic account of the building of the transcontinental railroad. In February 1854 the first railroad from the East reached the Mississippi; by the end of the nineteenth century five major transcontinental railroads linked the East Coast with the Pacific Ocean and thousands of miles of tracks criss crossed in the West, a vast and virginal land just a few years before. The story of this extraordinary undertaking is one of breathtaking technological ingenuity, otherwordly idealism, and all too wordly greed. The heroes and villains were Irish and Chineselaborers, intrepid engineers, avaricious bankers, stock manipulators, and corrupt politicians. Before it was over more than 155 million acres one tenth of the country were given away to the railroad magnates, Indian tribes were decimated, the buffalo were driven from the Great Plains, millions of immigrants were lured from Europe, and a colossal continental nation was built. Woven into this dramatic narrative are the origins of present day governmental corruption, the first ties between powerful corporations and politicians who ‘enjoyed the frequent showers of money that fell upon them from railroad stock manipulators, and gave away America.’ How the people of that time responded to a sense of disillusionment remarkably similar to our own adds a contemporary dimension to this story.

Wounded Knee

Dee Brown’s bestselling adult book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, opened the eyes of a generation to the Indian struggle to survive the white man’s expansion. This young adult edition relates the profoundly disturbing story of the plunder of the great Indian nations.

The Galvanized Yankees

Here is the fascinating and little known story of The Galvanized Yankees, who stood watch over a nation that they had once sought to destroy. They were Confederate soldiers who were recruited from Union prison camps in the North to serve in the West. On the condition they would not be sent south to fight their former comrades, they exchanged gray for blue uniforms.

From 1864 to 1866 six regiments of Galvanized Yankees fought Indians, escorted supply trains along the Oregon and Sante Fe trails, accompanied expeditions, guarded surveying parties for the Union Pacific Railroad, and manned lonely outposts on the frontier. Dee Brown, the author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, tells what happened to a lost legion, unhonored and unsung.

Wondrous Times on the Frontier

In his first work of nonfiction in twelve years, celebrated historian Dee Brown draws on more than fifty years of research in this good humored social history of the American frontier. In a work rich in anecdotes about pioneers, women, lawmen, outlaws, newspapermen, schoolteachers, cowboys, tenderfeet, preachers, and native Americans, Brown portrays the diversity of the frontier experience.

When the Century Was Young

The best selling author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee shares his memories of growing up in Arkansas, his education and military service, his fascination with the American West, and his devotion to writing.National

The American West

The American West centers on three subjects: Native Americans, settlers, and ranchers. Dee Brown re creates these groups struggles for their place in this new landscape and illuminates the history of the old West in a single volume, filled with maps and vintage photographs. In his spirited telling of this national saga, Brown demonstrates once again his abilities as a master storyteller and as an entertaining popular historian.

Images of the Old West

History buffs, Old West aficionados, and all who would return to the thrilling days of yesteryear will be an eager audience for this remarkable book, filled with extraordinary images by historical artist Mort Kuntsler and the text of bestselling author Dee Brown. In Images of the Old West, an epic period in our nation’s history is brought to vivid new life. More than 80 full color paintings. Size D. Illustrator tour.