"The first solidly documented account of the U.S. government's renewed assault upon American Indians that began in the 1970's" -- Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee On a hot June morning in 1975, a desperate shoot-out between FBI agents and Native Americans near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, left an Indian and two federal agents dead. Four members of AIM, the American Indian Movement, were indicted on murder charges, and one, Leonard Peltier, was convicted and is now serving consecutive life sentences in a federal penitentiary. Behind this violent chain of events lie issues of great complexity and profound historical resonance, brilliantly explicated by Peter Matthiessen in this controversial book. In a comprehensive history of the desperate Indian efforts to maintain their traditions, Matthiessen reveals the Lakota tribe's long struggle with the U.S. government, from Red Cloud's War and Little Big Horn in the nineteenth century to the shameful discrimination that led to the new Indian wars of the 1970s. Kept off the shelves for eight years because of one of the most protracted and bitterly fought legal cases in publishing history, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse makes clear why the traditional Indian concept of the sacred inviolability of the earth is so important, especially at a time when increasing populations are destroying the precious resources of our world. By the time I had turned the final page, I felt angry enough... to want to shout from the rooftops, 'Wake up, America, before it's too late!' For Matthiessen, in this extraordinary, complex work, powerfully propounds several disturbing themes which the white majority in America will ignore at extreme peril." -- Nick Kotz, The Washington Post Matthiessen presents a convincing case not only for a retrial of Leonard Peltier but also for a re-examination of the real cost of the American Dream -- in human lives, in mockery of justice, in squandered earth." -- USA Today