Reviews tagging 'Genocide'

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne

4 reviews

jeddicat's review

Graphic with horrific violence against women.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, War, Colonisation, Torture, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Racial slurs, Murder, Death, Child death, Genocide, Fire/Fire injury, Child abuse, Violence, Racism, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Classism, and Blood

pirateenthusiast's review

1.25

A well researched book. I learned a lot, but this is where the positives end. The language used in this book is repeatedly and horrendously racist. I'm not sure if this was the authors intention or not, but he portrays the Comanches and Native Americans as a whole as "backward stone age hunters". Gwynne claims to be providing an unbiased neutral book that shows both sides in an accurate light. He certainly succeeds in not straying away from the violence of the Comanches with his brutal and graphic descriptions, yet when he describes the violence of the other side, the terms are much more vague, giving the reader the wrong impression. Here is a list of words used in this book and the frequency that they appeared.

Native: 32
Indian(s): 1,177
Savage: 28
Primitive: 19
Redskin: 3
Squaw: 25
Indigenous: 1

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Violence, Torture, War, Colonisation, Gore, Kidnapping, and Genocide

Moderate: Rape and Racial slurs

Minor: Animal death

siiriainen's review against another edition

dark informative sad medium-paced

1.0

A history of the genocide of America's indigenous people in the West in which the author continuously uses racist and antiquated terms to describe the indigenous groups he's writing about, the most obvious being his chosen term of "indian", but also describing the women as "squaws", calling them prehistoric and savage and so on. 

I'm not against him describing the violence that the Comanche perpetrated in the West against other indigenous groups and white settlers, that is well documented. But to use colonizing and racist language when describing it is pretty gross. Shocked this was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2011. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Murder, and Rape

folieassdeux's review against another edition

challenging informative medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Child death, Confinement, Death, Genocide, Grief, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, and Violence