Saga of the Sioux: An Adaptation from Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

by Dee Brown, Dwight Jon Zimmerman (Adapted by)

Overview

This new adaptation of Dee Brown's multimillion-copy bestseller, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, is filled with photographs and maps to bring alive the tragic saga of Native Americans for middle-grade readers. Focusing on the Sioux nation as representative of the entire Native American story, this meticulously researched account allows the great chiefs and warriors to speak for themselves about what happened to the Sioux from 1860 to the Massacre of Wounded Knee in 1891. This dramatic story is essential reading for every student of U.S. history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250050670
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	12/02/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	1140L (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Dee Brown was the author of more than twenty-five books on the American West and the Civil War. A librarian for many years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Brown died in 2002.

DWIGHT JON ZIMMERMAN has written extensively on military-history subjects for American Heritage, the Naval Institute Press, Vietnam Magazine, and numerous military-themed publications. His books include The Hammer and the Anvil and The Vietnam War: A Graphic History. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Editorial Reviews

A cogent, heartbreaking narration.” —BCCB

“History classes and others interested in this period will welcome this offering.” —Booklist

“A masterful adaptation. . . . This is a must-have addition to any United States history collection serving teens.” —VOYA

“A powerful work, this book will serve as a discussion starter and as an educational tool.” —School Library Journal

“A wrenching account of the injustices the Sioux endured from white men and the battles that ensued, based on Dee Brown's classic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Shattering, appalling, compelling. . . . One wonders, reading this searing, heartbreaking book, who, indeed, were the savages.” —The Washington Post on Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

“A first-rate account—strongly and ardently written.” —The New Yorker on Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

“Fusing scholarship with a capacity for writing a story of epic proportions, Brown has cut through a mass of white expansionist rhetoric to give the reader an Indian perspective of the conquest of the trans-Mississippi West for the last four decades of the nineteenth century. Highly recommended.” —Choice on Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

From the Publisher

A wrenching account of the injustices the Sioux endured from white men and the battles that ensued, based on Dee Brown's classic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Brown's work, considered groundbreaking in 1971, told the painful history of Native Americans in the late-19th century from their perspective. Rather than just shorten the weighty original, Zimmerman draws from chapters about the Sioux as representative of the broken treaties, battles, suffering and death. The fluid chronological adaptation conveys the view that "an overwhelming number" of settlers, soldiers and men in authority were "arrogant, greedy, racist, murderous, and cruel beyond belief," a conclusion supported by the many well-told accounts of travesties. Except for references to the Civil War, the author offers little historical or social context. He rarely mentions women, although the controversial term "squaw" appears once. The overall effect feels dated, including occasional flowery prose from the original book, such as "the remnants of the once proud woodland Sioux awaited their fate." Except for material supporting the introduction and epilogue, source notes are not included; readers are referred to the original for Brown's. Photographs, including many by Edward Curtis, and illustrations with useful captions appear frequently in the attractive, open design.

Flawed and no longer groundbreaking in its perspective, this nevertheless offers a readable description of an essential part of American history.(time line, glossary, suggested websites, recommended reading, index) (Nonfiction. 11-15)

Kirkus Reviews