Thursday, February 26, 2009

A Lion Among Men.

"Can those tarnished by infamy escape their sobriquets—cowardly, wicked, brainless, criminally earnest—to claim their own histories, to live honorably within their own skins before they're skinned alive?"

This line (from the author's summary of A Lion Among Men) alone makes me fall in love with the book.

Cette ligne (du resume de l'auteur de Un Lion Parmi les Hommes) seule me fait tomber amoureux avec le livre.


P.S. I have this problem where I read the first few letters of a word or phrase and guess at what the rest is... I kept reading the title again and again to be "Life Among Men." I might like that one more though...


P.P.S. I highly recommend checking out L. Frank Baum on Wikipedia if you are unaware of his famous editorials days after Sitting Bull was killed and then the day after the Wounded Knee Massacre.

"The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which, at best, is a disgrace to the war department. There has been plenty of time for prompt and decisive measures, the employment of which would have prevented this disaster.
The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.
An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that "when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre."

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