Books in Events in American History series

As companions to the first and second volumes in the American Food in History series we offer selections of recipes, updated and tested by food editor Jennifer Billock, using measurements and techniques that modern readers can use in their own kitchen. Arranged by main meal occasions (breakfast, picnic or lunch, dinner, dessert) these recipes―some familiar, some curious, all intriguing―will allow family and friends to get a “taste of the times” with their own “Civil War era” meals. The original versions of these recipes (and many more) can be found in Food in the Civil War Era: The North and Food in the Civil War Era: The South, edited by Helen Zoe Veit, along with fascinating essays about the history and the times.

The 71-day occupation of the village at Wounded Knee—February 27 to May 8, 1973—is a watershed event in the chronology of American Indian activism because it reflects both the height of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the beginning of the end of the power of that organization. It was at Wounded Knee Village where government forces surrounded a small, poorly armed band of AIM members who were protesting the death of Raymond Yellow Thunder and Wesley Bad Heart Bull and the subsequent court trials that meted out only minimal sentences for involuntary manslaughter to the non-Indian defendants. AIM members confronted local law enforcement and violently protested against the charges. As a result, the government declared a concentrated, no-holds-barred campaign to remove AIM leadership and to bankrupt the organization. The forceful text, detailed sidebars and chronology, and powerful images presented in Red Power transport readers back to this tense moment in recent American history.