Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary
Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography • Winner of the Society of American Historians Francis Parkman Prize • Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Western Biography • A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by True West (Best Biography) and The Boston Globe

Black Elk is the definitive biographical account of a figure whose dramatic life converged with some of the most momentous events in the history of the American West. Born in an era of rising violence between the Sioux, white settlers, and U.S. government troops, Black Elk killed his first man at the Little Bighorn, witnessed the death of his second cousin Crazy Horse, and traveled to Europe with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Upon his return, he was swept up in the traditionalist Ghost Dance movement and shaken by the Massacre at Wounded Knee. But Black Elk was not a warrior, instead accepting the path of a healer and holy man, motivated by a powerful prophetic vision that he struggled to understand.

In Black Elk, Joe Jackson has crafted a true American epic, restoring to its subject the richness of his times and gorgeously portraying a life of heroism and tragedy, adaptation and endurance, in an era of permanent crisis on the Great Plains.

1123477093
Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary
Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography • Winner of the Society of American Historians Francis Parkman Prize • Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Western Biography • A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by True West (Best Biography) and The Boston Globe

Black Elk is the definitive biographical account of a figure whose dramatic life converged with some of the most momentous events in the history of the American West. Born in an era of rising violence between the Sioux, white settlers, and U.S. government troops, Black Elk killed his first man at the Little Bighorn, witnessed the death of his second cousin Crazy Horse, and traveled to Europe with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Upon his return, he was swept up in the traditionalist Ghost Dance movement and shaken by the Massacre at Wounded Knee. But Black Elk was not a warrior, instead accepting the path of a healer and holy man, motivated by a powerful prophetic vision that he struggled to understand.

In Black Elk, Joe Jackson has crafted a true American epic, restoring to its subject the richness of his times and gorgeously portraying a life of heroism and tragedy, adaptation and endurance, in an era of permanent crisis on the Great Plains.

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Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary

Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary

by Joe Jackson
Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary

Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary

by Joe Jackson

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography • Winner of the Society of American Historians Francis Parkman Prize • Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Western Biography • A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by True West (Best Biography) and The Boston Globe

Black Elk is the definitive biographical account of a figure whose dramatic life converged with some of the most momentous events in the history of the American West. Born in an era of rising violence between the Sioux, white settlers, and U.S. government troops, Black Elk killed his first man at the Little Bighorn, witnessed the death of his second cousin Crazy Horse, and traveled to Europe with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Upon his return, he was swept up in the traditionalist Ghost Dance movement and shaken by the Massacre at Wounded Knee. But Black Elk was not a warrior, instead accepting the path of a healer and holy man, motivated by a powerful prophetic vision that he struggled to understand.

In Black Elk, Joe Jackson has crafted a true American epic, restoring to its subject the richness of his times and gorgeously portraying a life of heroism and tragedy, adaptation and endurance, in an era of permanent crisis on the Great Plains.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781250141255
Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 11/07/2017
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 640
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Joe Jackson is the author of several books. The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire, was named one of Time magazine’s Top Ten Nonfiction Books of 2008.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Dramatis Personae

Map

Prologue: “A Sort of a Preacher”

Part I: If You’re Not Good, the Wasichus Will Get You

1. Chosen

2. A Casualty of the Hundred Slain

3. The Great Vision

4. Resurrection

5. The Black Hills

6. “It Is War”

7. When the Wasichus Come

Part II: Childhood’s End

8. The Burning Road

9. Killing Crazy Horse

10. Grandmother’s Land

11. The Fear

12. Dances with Thunder

Part III: The Messiah Will Come Again

13. The Land of Darkness

14. The Making of a Medicine Man

15. The “Show Man”

16. The Entrance to Hell

17. La Belle Époque

18. The Messiah Will Come Again

19. Dances with Ghosts

20. Wounded Knee

21. “ There Will Be a Better Day to Die”

Part IV: “What Is an Indian?”

22. The Underground 347

23. Black Robe Days 361

24. Vanishing Americans

25. Black Elk Speaks

26. Defenders of the Faith

27. Disciples

Epilogue: Besieged

Time Line

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

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