The Chosen and The Damned

A wide-ranging consideration of Indigenous people in a nation driven by white supremacist ideology . . . A charged argument for fully including Native Americans in America’s racial history. * Kirkus Reviews * An absorbing look at the complex relationship between Native Americans and race. * Booklist * I have taught Native American history for thirty years and have always maintained that despite the injustice and the horror of it, we are not looking at a case of attempted genocide. Silverman’s book made me change my mind. It is a powerful work of the highest order. * Camilla Townsend, author of FIFTH SUN: A NEW HISTORY OF THE AZTECS * Drawing on deep research, weighing evidence carefully, and refusing easy answers, Silverman places Indigenous peoples at the core of Americans ideas about race and national identity—and therefore at the core of the national story. Especially in these times when fundamental historical meanings are deeply contested, everyone should read this wise, humane, and disturbing book. * Daniel K. Richter, author of author of BEFORE THE REVOLUTION: AMERICA'S ANCIENT PAST * From colonial times to present-day controversies about “Who is an Indian,” David Silverman traces the central role of Native Americans in the ugly, messy, and violent history of race and racism in America. Euro-Americans developed a collective identity as “civilized Whites” that drove and justified the destruction and dispossession of “savage Indians”; Indigenous peoples adopted “Indian” as a shared identity that distinguished them from and bolstered resistance to their genocidal and land-hungry oppressors. Readers may be discomfited by this bold and sweeping history, or take issue with some of its interpretations, but no one should ignore it. * Colin G. Galloway, author of THE INDIAN WORLD OF GEORGE WASHINGTON: THE FIRST PRESIDENT, THE FIRST AMERICANS, AND THE BIRTH OF THE NATION * An eye-opening and masterfully crafted book. David Silverman dismantles the myth that Native peoples were a doomed race, while insisting that their stories are the core of the American story. * Andrew Lipman, author of SQUANTO: A NATIVE ODYSSEY * In this powerful and wide-ranging work, David J. Silverman weaves discussions of race formation and racism into a highly readable narrative history of North America's Indigenous peoples. A powerful, important and provocative book that will force considerations of the many paths not taken in American history. * Michael Oberg, author of NATIVE AMERICA: A HISTORY * An ambitious and convincing book that lays bare the way White Europeans and Americans, for over 400 years, have used White constructs of race, white supremacy, and racism as ideological justifications for genocidal actions and policies against American Indians. Full of woe, violence, race-making, racism, and Native resilience, this is the story at the heart of America. * Robbie Ethridge, author of FROM CHICAZA TO CHICKASAW: THE EUROPEAN INVASION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE MISSISSIPPIAN WORLD, 1540-1715 * An ambitious and convincing book that lays bare the way White Europeans and Americans, for over 400 years, have used White constructs of race, white supremacy, and racism as ideological justifications for genocidal actions and policies against American Indians. Full of woe, violence, race-making, racism, and Native resilience, this is the story at the heart of America. * Robbie Ethridge, author of FROM CHICAZA TO CHICKASAW: THE EUROPEAN INVASION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE MISSISSIPPIAN WORLD, 1540–1715 * David Silverman writes with clarity and grace about complex, sensitive, and often sorrowful events. The Chosen and the Damned gives readers powerful new insights into the history of racialist and racist ideas in America. * James D. Rice, author of TALES FROM A REVOLUTION: BACON's REBELLION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF EARLY AMERICA *