October 15th, 2010
How do you describe the types of stories you gravitate towards writing?
I like ones that have a lot of complexity and a lot of hidden elements in them. I find myself naturally being pulled in that direction, to that part of the story. I like to find the things that are in contention one way or another and describe what they are like. When I started writing about intelligence agencies, that was the thing that really pulled me forward, the desire to know what the CIA was really like, how does it go about its business, what is the ethos of the people who work there. Intelligence services go to a lot of trouble to hide what they do, but they cannot hide what they are like. You can quickly learn to distinguish between their operational styles. You can read about something in the newspaper and say, that’s the Russians, or that’s the Israelis because you just know how they do it. You can also do that with the CIA. I was interested in that. It’s like following a strange form of animal through the forest and trying to find out where it goes, what it does and after a while, if you pay enough attention, you do find out.
What first drew you to this story, about the Battle of the Little Bighorn?
I got drawn to this in 1994. I started thinking about it when my brother and I visited the Little Bighorn battlefield. That’s something I had always wanted to see as a kid and just in general because I love that type of country. But the first time I went [September... (read more...)
Tags: Smithsonian
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September 21st, 2010
Q: What is the most important difference between The Killing of Crazy Horse and previous accounts that have been written about his life?
A: The Killing of Crazy Horse differs from previous books in its focus on the event—the killing itself—not a formal biography of the chief. Many different people played a role on the fatal day—the brooding General George Crook who was determined to get Crazy Horse out of the way; the great Oglala Sioux chief Red Cloud, who was the only American Indian ever to win a war against the government of the United States; the young West Point graduate, Lieutenant William Philo Clark, who thought he could “work” Indians to do the bidding of the Army; the mixed-blood scouts William Garnett (half Oglala) and Frank Grouard (half South Sea Islander); the war comrades of Crazy Horse, He Dog and Little Big Man. Crazy Horse stirred all these men to action, some to defend him, some to get him out of the way. The question at the heart of the book is why was he killed? I found the answer in what a dozen different men thought, felt, intended and did. Seeing the event whole, from all sides, is a good way—in my view, perhaps the best way—to understand what the Sioux and other Plains tribes suffered when they were confined to reservations.
Q: You are perhaps best known for your work on the CIA (although you have written about a wide variety of topics). What made you want to tell the story of Crazy... (read more...)
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