Book - Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life

This book offers a new, richly detailed, and meticulously documented biography of the famous nineteenth-century Oglala leader who has become an icon of Native American resistance.

In a lively and imaginatively constructed narrative, the book interprets Crazy Horse's life both in the context of Lakota society and culture, and within the history of Lakota relations with the United States through times of war and diplomacy. Author Kingsley Bray corrects older, idealized accounts - and draws on a greater variety of sources than other recent biographies - to expose the real Crazy Horse: not the brash Sioux warrior we have come to expect but a modest, reflective man whose courage was anchored in Lakota piety. Bray has plumbed interviews given by Crazy Horse's contemporaries in the early twentieth century and has consulted modern Lakotas to fill in vital details of Crazy Horse's life. The result is a comprehensive and fully annotated work that tells the unknown story of Crazy Horse, tracing the forces and events that shaped his inner life and determined the course of his career. About the Author: Kingsley M. Bray is an independent scholar who lives in Manchester, England. He has spent the past twenty years researching Plains Indians, especially Lakota, history and ethnology. Crazy Horse was named Best Book of 2006 by the Custer Battlefield Historian and Museum Association, and won a Spur Award for Best Western Biography from the Western Writers of America.