The Heart of Everything That Is by Bob Drury

It's customary to say of certain nonfiction books - gussied up with plenty of 'color' and psychological speculation - that they 'read like a novel,' but truth be told, most of the time we'd have to be talking about a pretty mediocre novel. Yet you only realize how little justice most popular histories do to their source material when you come across a book, like this one, that does everything right. A quintessentially Western tale of bold exploits, tough characters, brutal conditions and a lost way of life, this sounds like the sort of story that practically tells itself.

Another big chunk of the book derives from the first-person accounts (letters, diaries, memoirs) of whites living in the besieged Fort Phil Kearny on Big Piney Creek in what is now Wyoming, where the biggest battle in Red Cloud's War was fought in 1866. This is a ripping yarn, based in part on Red Cloud's memoir, which was transcribed by two reservation friends, misplaced in a drawer for several decades and is still relatively little-known. His life, and the war that bears his name, are the subject of 'The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend' by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin.

But Red Cloud was also the only Native American commander to defeat the United States in a war. Pragmatic as well as daring, he cuts a less romantic figure than those two more famous and more tragic Indian leaders of the same period he survived to the ripe old age of 88, dying in 1909. Red Cloud - Sioux chieftain, sometime ally of Sitting Bull and mentor to Crazy Horse - was a brilliant politician and military tactician.

The Heart of Everything That Is by Bob Drury