Writers LIVE: Peter Cozzens, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West

After the Civil War the Indian Wars would last more than three decades, permanently altering the physical and political landscape of America. Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates the intertribal strife over whether to fight or make peace; explores the dreary, squalid lives of frontier soldiers and the imperatives of the Indian warrior culture; and describes the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies. In dramatically relating bloody and tragic events as varied as Wounded Knee, the Nez Perce War, the Sierra Madre campaign, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, we encounter a pageant of fascinating characters, including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of officers, soldiers, and Indian agents, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud and the warriors they led.The Earth Is Weeping is a sweeping, definitive history of the battles and negotiations that destroyed the Indian way of life even as they paved the way for the emergence of the United States we know today.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. 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. Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund. Recorded On: Wednesday, November 8, 2017