About this item
With the end of the Civil War, the nation recommenced its expansion onto traditional Indian tribal lands, setting off a wide-ranging conflict that would last more than three decades. In an exploration of the wars and negotiations that destroyed tribal ways of life even as they made possible the emergence of the modern United States, Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates the encroachment experienced by the tribes and the tribal conflicts over whether to fight or make peace, and explores the squalid lives of soldiers posted to the frontier and the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies. As the action moves from Kansas and Nebraska to the Southwestern desert to the Dakotas and the Pacific Northwest, we encounter a pageant of fascinating characters including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of other military and political figures, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud.
About the Author
WINNER OF THE 2017 GILDER LEHRMAN PRIZE FOR MILITARY HISTORY
Peter Cozzens is the author of seventeen books on the Civil War and the American West. He recently retired after 30 years as a Foreign Service Officer with the U. S. Department of State. He also served four years as an Army officer before joining the Foreign Service.
All of Cozzens' books have been selections of the Book of the Month Club, History Book Club, and/or the Military Book Club. Cozzens' This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga and The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga were both Main Selections of the History Book Club and were chosen by Civil War Magazine as two of the 100 greatest works ever written on the conflict.
The Easton Press included This Terrible Sound as one of thirty-five volumes in its Library of the Civil War.
The History Book Club called his five-volume Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars "the definitive resource on the military struggle for the American West."
The Earth Is Weeping is the recipient of the 2017 Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History as the best book written in the English language on the subject in 2016.
The Earth is Weeping also has made a number of best books of the year lists, to include the Seattle Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Smithsonian Magazine, and Amazon.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/top-history-books-2016-180961616/#mJKIlJ2XL7P65QpF.01
In 2002 Cozzens received of the American Foreign Service Association's highest award, given annually to one Foreign Service Officer for exemplary moral courage, integrity, and creative dissent. He also received an Alumni Achievement award from his alma mater Knox College, from which he graduated summa cum laude.
Cozzens is a member of the Advisory Council of the Lincoln Prize.
He and his wife Antonia live in Kensington, Maryland.
pecozzens@gmail.com
