I don't know much about my nation. I'm not terribly happy about this - the fact that I know more about the various fantasy/science fiction universes than, say, the founding of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the border dispute with New Jersey. I can (and will) go on at length about various places that only exist between the collective ears of the reading population, but ask me about the westward expansion of the United States, and my ignorance is on full display.
I've been trying to correct this, and my second stop is S.C. Gwynne's "Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History". I really rather enjoyed this book, which avoids a few of the touch stones I was expecting (the trail of tears is mentioned, as is Little Big Horn), and keys in on the Parker family and the role they played in both the history of the Comanche tribe and the Texas Rangers. A second thread follows Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, a U.S. army office who has been overshadowed by Custer's death despite his contribution to both Manifest Destiny and the fall of the native nations of the United States.
There are long looks at the brutality on both sides of the cultural divide, and I was fascinated by how both the Comanches and the Texas Rangers adapted to confront one another (and how their failure to do so tended to result in massacres of one side or the other). This is also examined on the personal level, as a few members of the Parker family are taken prisoner by the two forces and have their lives and personalities changed irrevocably, for better or for worse.
Four out of Five - worth the purchase, little reread factor beyond skimming for sections.
