Books by Pekka Hamalainen
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power (The Lamar Series in Western History)
The first comprehensive history of the Lakota Indians and their profound role in shaping America’s history
Named One of the New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2019 • Named One of the 10 Best History Books of 2019 by Smithsonian Magazine • Winner of the MPIBA Reading the West Book Award for Narrative Nonfiction
“All nations deserve to have their stories told with this degree of attentiveness.”—Parul Sehgal, New York Times
“A brilliant, bold, gripping history.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, London Evening Standard, Best Books of 2019
Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull are iconic figures in the American imagination, but in this groundbreaking book they emerge as something different: the architects of Lakota America, an expansive and enduring Indigenous regime that commanded human fates in the North American interior for generations. In this first complete account of the Lakota Indians, Pekka Hämäläinen traces their rich and often surprising history from the early sixteenth to the early twenty‑first century. He explores the Lakotas’ roots as marginal hunter‑gatherers and reveals how they reinvented themselves twice: first as a river people who dominated the Missouri Valley, America’s great commercial artery, and then—in what was America’s first sweeping westward expansion—as a horse people who ruled supreme on the vast high plains.
Deeply researched and engagingly written, this history places the Lakotas at the center of American history, and the results are revelatory.
Copies
No copies available.
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power (The Lamar Series in Western History)
The first comprehensive history of the Lakota Indians and their profound role in shaping America’s history
Named One of the New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2019 • Named One of the 10 Best History Books of 2019 by Smithsonian Magazine • Winner of the MPIBA Reading the West Book Award for Narrative Nonfiction
“All nations deserve to have their stories told with this degree of attentiveness.”—Parul Sehgal, New York Times
“A brilliant, bold, gripping history.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, London Evening Standard, Best Books of 2019
Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull are iconic figures in the American imagination, but in this groundbreaking book they emerge as something different: the architects of Lakota America, an expansive and enduring Indigenous regime that commanded human fates in the North American interior for generations. In this first complete account of the Lakota Indians, Pekka Hämäläinen traces their rich and often surprising history from the early sixteenth to the early twenty‑first century. He explores the Lakotas’ roots as marginal hunter‑gatherers and reveals how they reinvented themselves twice: first as a river people who dominated the Missouri Valley, America’s great commercial artery, and then—in what was America’s first sweeping westward expansion—as a horse people who ruled supreme on the vast high plains.
Deeply researched and engagingly written, this history places the Lakotas at the center of American history, and the results are revelatory.
Copies
-
$22.00
The Comanche Empire (The Lamar Series in Western History)
From the author of Lakota America, an award-winning history of the rise and decline of the vast and imposing Comanche empire
“Cutting-edge revisionist western history.”—Larry McMurtry, New York Review of Books
“A landmark study that will make readers see the history of southwestern America in an entirely new way.”—David J. Weber, author of Bárbaros
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a Native American empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet until now the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in American history.
This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches. It is a story that challenges the idea of Indigenous peoples as victims of European expansion and offers a new model for the history of colonial expansion, colonial frontiers, and Native-European relations in North America and elsewhere. Pekka Hämäläinen shows in vivid detail how the Comanches built their unique empire and resisted European colonization, and why they fell to defeat in 1875. With extensive knowledge and deep insight, the author brings into clear relief the Comanches’ remarkable impact on the trajectory of history.
Copies
No copies available.
Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
New York Times Book Review • 100 Notable Books of 2022
Best Books of 2022 ― New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence
“I can only wish that, when I was that lonely college junior and was finishing Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, I’d had Hämäläinen’s book at hand.” ―David Treuer, The New Yorker
“[T]he single best book I have ever read on Native American history.” ―Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times Book Review
A prize-winning scholar rewrites 400 years of American history from Indigenous perspectives, overturning the dominant origin story of the United States.
There is an old, deeply rooted story about America that goes like this: Columbus “discovers” a strange continent and brings back tales of untold riches. The European empires rush over, eager to stake out as much of this astonishing “New World” as possible. Though Indigenous peoples fight back, they cannot stop the onslaught. White imperialists are destined to rule the continent, and history is an irreversible march toward Indigenous destruction.
Yet as with other long-accepted origin stories, this one, too, turns out to be based in myth and distortion. In Indigenous Continent, acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history. Shifting our perspective away from Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, the Revolution, and other well-trodden episodes on the conventional timeline, he depicts a sovereign world of Native nations whose members, far from helpless victims of colonial violence, dominated the continent for centuries after the first European arrivals. From the Iroquois in the Northeast to the Comanches on the Plains, and from the Pueblos in the Southwest to the Cherokees in the Southeast, Native nations frequently decimated white newcomers in battle. Even as the white population exploded and colonists’ land greed grew more extravagant, Indigenous peoples flourished due to sophisticated diplomacy and leadership structures.
By 1776, various colonial powers claimed nearly all of the continent, but Indigenous peoples still controlled it―as Hämäläinen points out, the maps in modern textbooks that paint much of North America in neat, color-coded blocks confuse outlandish imperial boasts for actual holdings. In fact, Native power peaked in the late nineteenth century, with the Lakota victory in 1876 at Little Big Horn, which was not an American blunder, but an all-too-expected outcome.
Hämäläinen ultimately contends that the very notion of “colonial America” is misleading, and that we should speak instead of an “Indigenous America” that was only slowly and unevenly becoming colonial. The evidence of Indigenous defiance is apparent today in the hundreds of Native nations that still dot the United States and Canada. Necessary reading for anyone who cares about America’s past, present, and future, Indigenous Continent restores Native peoples to their rightful place at the very fulcrum of American history. 42 black-and-white images and 10 maps
Copies
-
$22.00
Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
New York Times Book Review • 100 Notable Books of 2022
Best Books of 2022 ― New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence
“I can only wish that, when I was that lonely college junior and was finishing Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, I’d had Hämäläinen’s book at hand.” ―David Treuer, The New Yorker
“[T]he single best book I have ever read on Native American history.” ―Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times Book Review
A prize-winning scholar rewrites 400 years of American history from Indigenous perspectives, overturning the dominant origin story of the United States.
There is an old, deeply rooted story about America that goes like this: Columbus “discovers” a strange continent and brings back tales of untold riches. The European empires rush over, eager to stake out as much of this astonishing “New World” as possible. Though Indigenous peoples fight back, they cannot stop the onslaught. White imperialists are destined to rule the continent, and history is an irreversible march toward Indigenous destruction.
Yet as with other long-accepted origin stories, this one, too, turns out to be based in myth and distortion. In Indigenous Continent, acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history. Shifting our perspective away from Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, the Revolution, and other well-trodden episodes on the conventional timeline, he depicts a sovereign world of Native nations whose members, far from helpless victims of colonial violence, dominated the continent for centuries after the first European arrivals. From the Iroquois in the Northeast to the Comanches on the Plains, and from the Pueblos in the Southwest to the Cherokees in the Southeast, Native nations frequently decimated white newcomers in battle. Even as the white population exploded and colonists’ land greed grew more extravagant, Indigenous peoples flourished due to sophisticated diplomacy and leadership structures.
By 1776, various colonial powers claimed nearly all of the continent, but Indigenous peoples still controlled it―as Hämäläinen points out, the maps in modern textbooks that paint much of North America in neat, color-coded blocks confuse outlandish imperial boasts for actual holdings. In fact, Native power peaked in the late nineteenth century, with the Lakota victory in 1876 at Little Big Horn, which was not an American blunder, but an all-too-expected outcome.
Hämäläinen ultimately contends that the very notion of “colonial America” is misleading, and that we should speak instead of an “Indigenous America” that was only slowly and unevenly becoming colonial. The evidence of Indigenous defiance is apparent today in the hundreds of Native nations that still dot the United States and Canada. Necessary reading for anyone who cares about America’s past, present, and future, Indigenous Continent restores Native peoples to their rightful place at the very fulcrum of American history. 42 black-and-white images and 10 maps
Copies
-
$40.00
Cengage Advantage Books: Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Volume 1: To 1877
by James M. McPherson, Paul E. Johnson, Pekka Hamalainen, John M. Murrin, Denver Brunsman
This economically priced version of LIBERTY, EQUALITY, POWER, 7th Edition offers readers the complete narrative while limiting the number of features, photos, and maps. A highly respected, balanced, and thoroughly modern approach to U.S. History, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, POWER uses these three themes in a unique approach to show how the United States was transformed, in a relatively short time, from a land inhabited by hunter-gatherer and agricultural Native American societies into the most powerful industrial nation on earth. This approach helps students understand not only the impact of the notions of liberty and equality, which are often associated with the American story, but also how dominant and subordinate groups have affected and been affected by the ever-shifting balance of power. The text integrates the best of recent social and cultural scholarship into a political story, offering students a comprehensive and complete understanding of American history.
Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
Copies
No copies available.
Cengage Advantage Books: Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Volume 2: Since 1863
by James M. McPherson, Paul E. Johnson, Pekka Hamalainen, John M. Murrin, Denver Brunsman
This economically priced version of LIBERTY, EQUALITY, POWER, 7th Edition offers readers the complete narrative while limiting the number of features, photos, and maps. A highly respected, balanced, and thoroughly modern approach to U.S. History, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, POWER uses these three themes in a unique approach to show how the United States was transformed, in a relatively short time, from a land inhabited by hunter-gatherer and agricultural Native American societies into the most powerful industrial nation on earth. This approach helps students understand not only the impact of the notions of liberty and equality, which are often associated with the American story, but also how dominant and subordinate groups have affected and been affected by the ever-shifting balance of power. The text integrates the best of recent social and cultural scholarship into a political story, offering students a comprehensive and complete understanding of American history.
Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
Copies
No copies available.