...[a] magnificent and tragic new history ... Sharfstein is a wonderful storyteller with a deep knowledge of all the relevant source material from the period. His narrative is rich with fascinating historical details ... However vivid the material and well-structured the narrative, the story is inescapably tragic and often painful to read. It’s a powerful reminder that Americans live on lands stolen by force and without provocation. It’s also a tantalizing glimpse of a possible future that never materialized.
...the structure of Thunder in the Mountains is simple and direct, exploring the lives of each man toward their ultimate meeting, the heart-wrenching details of the conflict at the book’s center and the ways in which the war forever changed both men and drove them — and many of those closest to them — toward a sense of mutual understanding. While the book is a thorough and well-documented work of history, it delves into the human condition like the best fiction, offering insights not only into historical events but also into the ways people can grow and evolve ... Thunder in the Mountains is a great and bloody war story to be sure, but it is also a careful meditation on human rights, the reach of government, and the power of a lone voice speaking truth.
The great achievement of Sharfstein's chronicle of the specific tragedy of the Nez Perce is to render this past both vivid and newly painful ... The first third or so of Thunder in the Mountains is meandering and expository. But in describing the Nez Perce's battle-pocked flight east, across mountains and rivers and toward potential freedom in Canada, Sharfstein's narrative becomes intimate, propulsive and ultimately heart-breaking ... serve[s] as both a compassionate military history and a shrewd examination of how cultural legends are created.
Sharfstein reinforces Joseph’s stature as a figure of courage, dignity, and moral rectitude. But he also shows Joseph in a more nuanced light as the leader strives to negotiate with the U.S. government while navigating the tricky waters of intratribal politics. What makes Sharftstein’s account unusual is the equal focus he places upon army officer Howard, who became both an admirer and nemesis of Joseph ... Sharfstein has provided a scrupulously researched and detailed revisiting of one of the most moving and saddest sagas in American history.
Law and history professor Daniel J. Sharfstein has crafted a solidly researched, well-written and engaging study of Chief Joseph and of Oliver Otis Howard, a one-armed brigadier general who tried to keep the Nez Perce separated from encroaching white settlers ... Thunder in the Mountains tells the two men's stories by drawing from numerous sources, including their own words and accounts by other survivors of the Nez Perce War ... Sharfstein's book shows how numerous discussions occurred between Gen. Howard's negotiators and well-versed Nez Perce leaders, including Joseph and his brother, Ollokot.
Sharfstein paints his pictures of this beautiful and terrifying region on a canvas that stretches from daunting inland mountains to bustling seacoast towns ... Deftly woven into the story are portraits of such fascinating figures as Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who served as Howard's aide and later became a political radical, and the fierce warrior Yellow Wolf, whose remembered accounts of battle provide Sharfstein with some of his most chilling descriptions.
Mixed with exciting set pieces—battles, treaty negotiations, oratory over whose rightful land it was—and bolstered by impressive archival research, Sharfstein’s story unfolds as a swift-moving narrative of tragic inevitability. A superb, densely detailed complement to William Vollmann’s poetic/fictional treatment The Dying Grass (2015), of compelling interest to any student of 19th-century American history.
Sharfstein writes with great skill and due regard for the sad, human elements of the U.S. effort to hem in and defeat a defiant people whose great leader remains an example of moral courage and bearing. No other book better brings to the fore the qualities of Chief Joseph or better explores the dilemma of his pursuer, Gen. O.O. Howard ... This is in many ways a splendid book. But it’s also a bloated one, filled with irrelevant details.
