Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As someone who has seriously studied Plains Indian for over 20 years, and specifically Lakota culture and history, I feel the need to offset all these glowing 4 & 5 star reviews. In order to claim the catchy subtitle of "The Untold Story", the authors seem to have fabricated quite a bit of that story. In short, the authors have a complete lack of understanding of Lakota culture and the book is full of significant inaccuracies. And, even worse, untruths. From the misunderstanding of Lakota religion, customs, society ("a Sioux woman's inferior status"), to mistranslations, racist undertones ("Sioux braves" and "Red Cloud possessed forethought unusual in an Indian", to name a few), to the outright fabrication of graphic and specific torture, and Crazy Horse's mooning, to insisting on calling a victory against US soldiers a massacre, this book is absolutely rubbish. Eloquently written, but rubbish. Conveniently they left out what their sources were in the notes. Much is clearly drawn from Red Cloud's autobiography, penned down by his friend Sam Deon and fairly recently published (Eli Paul editor); yet the authors have blatantly invented many additional details to make the book more fantastic. It is "revisionist revisionism" at its worst; I sometimes felt I was reading a 19th century newspaper on bloodthirsty savages. The only parts that are believable are those that document US or white events. The authors should have stuck to the subjects they know; clearly they were in over their heads trying to write about the Plains Indians. If one is more bothered by commercial success rather than accurate history, this is the result. Sadly, many readers now and in the future will think this is fact --and will probably brand anyone who disagrees as "PC". I was eagerly looking forward to an honest and balanced account of Red Cloud's life. This is not it. Not even close. Do yourself a favor and read `Autobiography of Red Cloud' first. Or try Larson's and Olson's books. Red Cloud's story is not "Untold" at all, unless of course "untold" in this case means "untrue".