An entertaining and affecting story of a remarkable American Indian family. Starita, a longtime reporter for the Miami Herald, combines oral history with his own reporting and research to chronicle one Lakota family's history from the early 19th century to the present. The Dull Knifes are warriors. At the center of this book is Guy Dull Knife Sr. Now 96 and in a nursing home, he remembers the horrors of being mustard-gassed during WW I and then returning home, having fought for a country that didn't consider him a citizen. Starita also tells of the first Dull Knife, who fought with Crazy Horse against the US Army in the 1860s. Signing the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the chief promised never to `` `sharpen his knife' against the whites,'' a promise he kept, refusing to join the fight at Little Bighorn. Sent to Indian Territory (current-day Oklahoma), his people found conditions unbearable, and in 1878, harassed by the US Army, Dull Knife led his people on a desperate 600-mile trek back to their homelands in the mountains of Wyoming and Montana. His son, George Dull Knife, after witnessing the carnage of Wounded Knee in 1890, went on to tour with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. Guy Jr. played cowboys and Indians in the 1950s—when even Indian boys wanted to be John Wayne. He was drafted in 1968 and fought for real in Vietnam. Like many Indians, he was forced to walk ``point'' at the head of columns; the highly vulnerable position was assigned to Native Americans because of their supposed skill as hunters and trackers. Still struggling with his war experience 25 years later, Guy is now an accomplished artist. Both Guy Sr. and Jr. participated in the siege of Wounded Knee in 1973, a 71-day crisis after which Indians won the right to reopen the treaty of 1868. (For a history of another Lakota family, see Leonard Crow Dog's Crow Dog, p. 285.) Starita tells the Dull Knifes' story in remarkable and affectionate detail, maintaining a balance between the history of a people and the history of a family. (Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club/History Book Club selections)
Pub Date: April 19, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14010-7
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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