National Bestseller Winner of the 2023 National Book Award in Nonfiction • Finalist for the
2023 Los Angeles Times Book Award in History • Winner of 2024 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in
Nonfiction • Winner of the 2024 Mark Lynton History Prize Named a best book of 2023 by New
Yorker Esquire Publishers Weekly Barnes & Noble A New York Times Notable Book of 2023 •
A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction of 2023 • An NPR “Book We Love” for 2023
“Eloquent and comprehensive. . . . In the book’s sweeping synthesis standard flashpoints of
U.S. history take on new meaning.”—Kathleen DuVal Wall Street Journal “In accounts of
American history Indigenous peoples are often treated as largely incidental—either obstacles
to be overcome or part of a narrative separate from the arc of nation-building. Blackhawk . . .
[shows] that Native communities have instead been inseparable from the American story all
along.”— Washington Post Book World “Books to Read in 2023” A sweeping and overdue
retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding
the evolution of modern America The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of
Native Americans yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long
practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing however as a new generation of scholars
insists that any full American history address the struggle survival and resurgence of
American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of
modern America. Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non‑Native histories
from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late
twentieth century. In this transformative synthesis he shows that • European colonization in
the 1600s was never a predetermined success • Native nations helped shape England’s crisis of
empire • the first shots of the American Revolution were prompted by Indian affairs in the
interior • California Indians targeted by federally funded militias were among the first
casualties of the Civil War • the Union victory forever recalibrated Native communities
across the West • twentieth-century reservation activists refashioned American law and
policy. Blackhawk’s retelling of U.S. history acknowledges the enduring power agency and
survival of Indigenous peoples yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing
anew the varied meanings of America.
