Author Dee Brown died at his home in Little Rock, Ark. on Thursday [December 12]. He was 94. His book "Grierson's Raid: A Cavalry Adventure of the Civil War" was about Benjamin Grierson, a Union general who would rather have been leading an orchestra than "wild-riding cavalrymen." Brown's meticulous research and masterly storytelling produced the 1970 best seller "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West," "Bury My Heart ..." published by Holt sold more than five million copies, told a grim, revisionist tale of the ruthless mistreatment and eventual displacement of the Indian by white conquerors from 1860 to 1890. Some historians have since taken a more moderate view, but before Mr. Brown's portrayal of white beastliness and Indian saintliness entered the public consciousness, the history of Western conquest was usually told from a much more Eurocentric point of view, a perspective burnished by countless Hollywood movies. In many of his 29 fiction and nonfiction books, Mr. Brown strove to see things from a new perspective. And contrary to most people's expectations, he was not a Westerner. His history "Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow: Railroads in the West" was an exposé of the owners' treacherous dealings, and his "Gentle Tamers: Women of the Old Wild West" sought to dispel what he called the "sunbonnet myth" of stoic pioneer women. Eextracts from New York Times, December 14, 2002 Back to Table of Contents -- ACW Newsletter # 3 Back to ACW Newsletter List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Marc Shefelton. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com