In 1953 young surgeon Robert H. Ruby began work as the chief medical officer at the hospital on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He began writing almost daily to his sister, describing the Oglala Lakota people he served, his Bureau of Indian Affairs colleagues, and day-to-day life on the reservation. Ruby and his wife were active in the social life of the non-white community, which allowed Ruby, also a self-trained ethnographer, to write in detail about the Oglala Lakota people and their culture, covering topics such as religion, art, traditions, and values. His frank and personal depiction of conditions he encountered on the reservation examines poverty, alcoholism, the educational system, and employment conditions and opportunities. Ruby also wrote critically of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, describing the bureaucracy that made it difficult for him to do his job and kept his hospital permanently understaffed and undersupplied. These engaging letters provide a compelling memoir of life at Pine Ridge in the mid-1950s.

The great Native American warriors and their resistance to the U.S. government in the war against the Plains Indians is a well-known chapter in the story of the American West. In the aftermath of the great resistance, as the Indian nations recovered from war, many figures loomed heroic, yet their stories are mostly unknown. This long-overdue biography of Dewey Beard (ca. 1862–1955), a Lakota who witnessed the Battle of Little Bighorn and survived the Wounded Knee Massacre, chronicles a remarkable life that can be traced through major historical events from the late nineteenth into the mid-twentieth century. Beard was not only a witness to two major battles against the Lakota; he also traveled with William “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West show, worked as a Hollywood Indian, and witnessed the grand transformation of the Black Hills into a tourism mecca. Beard spent most of his later life fighting to reclaim his homeland and acting as “old Dewey Beard,” a living relic of the “old West” for the tourists. With a keen eye for detail and a true storyteller’s talent, Philip Burnham presents the man behind the legend of Dewey Beard and shows how the life of the last survivor of Little Bighorn provides a glimpse into the survival of Indigenous America.

A history of U.S. public health emergencies and how we can turn the tide. Despite enormous advances in medical science and public health education over the last century, access to health care remains a dominant issue in American life. U.S. health care is often hailed as the best in the world, yet the public health emergencies of today often echo the public health emergencies of yesterday: consider the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 and COVID-19, the displacement of the Dust Bowl and the havoc of Hurricane Maria, the Reagan administration’s antipathy toward the AIDS epidemic and the lack of accountability during the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Spanning the period from the presidency of Woodrow Wilson to that of Donald Trump, American Health Crisis illuminates how—despite the elevation of health care as a human right throughout the world—vulnerable communities in the United States continue to be victimized by structural inequalities across disparate geographies, income levels, and ethnic groups. Martin Halliwell views contemporary public health crises through the lens of historical and cultural revisionings, suturing individual events together into a narrative of calamity that has brought us to our current crisis in health politics. American Health Crisis considers the future of public health in the United States and, presenting a reinvigorated concept of health citizenship, argues that now is the moment to act for lasting change.

While Native Americans are perhaps the most studied people in our society, they too often remain the least understood and visible. Fictions and stereotypes predominate, obscuring substantive and fascinating facts about Native societies. The Extraordinary Book of Native American Lists works to remedy this problem by compiling fun, unique, and significant facts about Native groups into one volume, complete with references to additional online and print resources. In this volume, readers can learn about Native figures from a diverse range of cultures and professions, including award-winning athletes, authors, filmmakers, musicians, and environmentalists. Readers are introduced to Native U.S. senators, Medal of Freedom winners, Medal of Honor recipients, Major League baseball players, and U.S. Olympians, as well as a U.S. vice president, a NASA astronaut, a National Book Award recipient, and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Other categories found in this book are: History Stereotypes and Myths Tribal Government Federal-Tribal Relations State-Tribal Relations Native Lands and Environmental Issues Health Religion Economic Development Military Service and War Education Native Languages Science and Technology Food Visual Arts Literary and Performing Arts Film Music and Dance Print, Radio, and Television Sports and Games Exhibitions, Pageants, and Shows Alaska Natives Native Hawaiians Urban Indians Including further fascinating facts, this wonderful resource will be a great addition not only to tribal libraries but to public and academic libraries, individuals, and scholars as well.

A moving, thoughtful, beautifully illustrated look at the lives of men and women who helped shape the history of the Lakota people and the American West Lakota Portraits weaves together vignettes of Lakotas, including both prominent and ordinary individuals, to tell the story of the Lakota people. It covers the sweep of Lakota history from earliest years, focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Examining the question of who the Lakota people are, Joseph Agonito explores the days of nomadic freedom on the Great Plains, Lakota culture and religion, internal struggles, the coming of European settlers, conflicts generated by waves of miners and immigrants, clashes with white authorities, war with American soldiers, the loss of freedom, the countless challenges encountered in transitioning to the reservation, and life on and off the reservations. While numerous books tell the history of the Lakota people, Lakota Portraits tells their story through the colorful lives and experiences of various notable individuals who span that history. Each vignette tells a piece of the narrative—both grand and commonplace stories of men and women. Together, these stories paint a picture of a courageous, vibrant people, full of life and love for the Lakota nation and their homeland. Unlike other books on the Lakota, Lakota Portraits spends considerable time on the reservation years, well into the twentieth century, and the characters who helped shape the difficult and painful adjustments the Lakota people made to life on and off the agencies.