Bringing together Custer, Sherman, Grant, and other fascinating military and political figures, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo, this “sweeping work of narrative history” ( San Francisco Chronicle ) is the fullest account to date of how the West was won—and lost. 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. Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History Winner of the Caroline Bancroft History Prize Shortlisted for the Military History Magazine Book of the Year Award Finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award in Best Western Historical Nonfiction A Smithsonian Top History Book A Times (UK) Book of the Year "A detailed recounting of random carnage, bodies burned, treaties broken and treachery let loose across the land. . . . Cozzens admirably succeeds in framing the Indian Wars with acute historical accuracy. . . . [D]emonstrates vast knowledge of American military history." —Douglas Brinkley, The New York Times Book Review "[S]ets a new standard for Western Indian Wars history. . . . [T]he most comprehensive, insightful synthesis of the conflict between the Western tribes and the United States government and citizens published by a popular New York press in decades. . . . Like William Manchester’s The Glory and the Dream . . . [Cozzens’] brilliant thesis and detailed narrative will sustain the reader…from the prologue to the conclusion. . . . [S]uccinctly seeks a sharper understanding of the cause and effects of the American government’s policies, citizen relations with the tribes, intertribal history and warfare, and the United States’ massive immigration into the West during and after the Civil War." —Stuart Rosebrook, True West Magazine “ A] valuable contribution. . . .  [S]weeps across 25 years of U.S. Indian policy, gives clear accounts of battles and raids and introduces generals and chiefs, foot soldiers and warriors. While Cozzens doesn’t say he wrote The Earth Is Weeping to supplant [Bury My Heart at] Wounded Knee , he does express his hope that it will bring balance and better understanding of the Indian Wars of the American West. In that, he succeeds.” —John B. Saul, The Seattle Times “[S]corching vividness. . . .  [C]risp, muscular prose that offers clear pictures of men at war. A sweeping work of narrative history that synthesizes the work of countless historians, the book . . . recognizes fragments of nobility and humanity amid epic tragedy. Without implying any false equivalence, Cozzens emphasizes history’s tangled complexity.” —Dan Cryer, The San Francisco Chronicle "A comprehensive look. . . . A striking and thorough explanation. . . . The structure of the book allows the interweaving of timelines and historical context in a way that makes the heavy subject matter extremely readable and also thought provoking.  Cozzens . . . takes to heart his own words of warning about the myths that pervade pop culture. . . . This is a history book, but it is also a present-tense book, full of ironies about how we’re not so different from 19th century Westerners." —Erin H. Turner, Big Sky Journal "[S]nappy prose, a strong narrative cadence, and admirable clarity. Cozzens is a gifted writer. . . .  It's one of the strengths of the book that Cozzens lets none of his cast of characters—Euro-Americans, Native Americans, political figures, military officers, and all the rest—off the hook for responsibility for what happened. Written briskly, it draws you in; its maps are unusually numerous and clear; its comprehensiveness, making it useful to anyone wishing to know the facts of the many, distinct Indian wars, is unlikely to be surpassed. For those wishing to learn the story of the Indian wars of the American West, this is the book to turn to." — James M. Banner Jr., The Weekly Standard "An evenhanded and smoothly written volume th