peter cozzens

Sifting through layers and layers of myth and legend—from nineteenth-century dime novels like Deadwood Dick to HBO prestige dramas to the casino billboards outside of present-day Deadwood—Peter Cozzens unveils the true face of Deadwood, South Dakota, the storied mining town that sprang up in early 1876 and came raining down in ashes only three years later, destined to become food for the imagination and a nostalgic landmark that now brings in more than two and a half million visitors each year.

"How did such a small, remote speck of a place come to loom so large in American lore and myth? With Peter Cozzens' artful book, we get the answer. In these pungent pages, you can smell the whiskey, the gun smoke, the horse lather, the gold dust, and the mining chemicals. And you start to see Deadwood as something more, as a node of raw avarice and frank ambition reflecting larger American impulses that are still alive today. Deadwood isn't dead. It lives on in legend, in pulp Westerns, films, and television shows, and now, in the pages of a fine non-fiction narrative that's as alluring as its subject." —Hampton Sides, NYT bestselling author of Blood and Thunder and The Wide Wide Sea

Peter Cozzens' Deadwood is a sweeping saga of greed, stolen Indigenous land, and legendary westerners such as Wild Bill Hickok, Seth Bullock, and Lakota leader Crazy Horse. With the in-depth research Cozzens is known for, thought-provoking new insights, and a narrative that moves along at a fast clip, readers of Deadwood are guaranteed to hit pay dirt on every page.

--Mark Lee Gardner, author of Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone

"What a perfect marriage—one of the most exquisite chroniclers of America's Wild West exploring the most notorious town of the era. Throughout Deadwood, Cozzens brings fresh drama and absorbing detail to paint a vivid portrait of the colorful characters who, in just three short years, etched this tiny, if hellraising, South Dakota mining community into the lore of our collective history. Exemplary in all respects, thanks to the author's storytelling skills, Deadwood lives again."

 —Tom Clavin and Bob Drury, bestselling authors of Blood and Treasure and Throne of Grace

"There is no western town more steeped in myth, legend, and fairy tale than Deadwood, South Dakota—not even Tombstone, Leadville, or Dodge City. It was the Wild West of dime novels, of breathless, not-quite-exactly-true accounts in the newspapers. What Peter Cozzens has done with this remarkable book is to show us that the truth about Deadwood is, in fact, even more interesting than the myth." 

—S. C. Gwynne, author of NYT Bestseller Empire of the Summer Moon

"A master historian confronts the mystique of the wildest of the Wild West towns—a place shrouded in
frontier myth and gilded Hollywood romance—and the result is a fast-paced, superbly written narrative
marked with all the usual Peter Cozzens graceful touches. A dream team of fabulous characters—Wild
Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Crazy Horse, Seth Bullock, George Hearst, Al Swearingen—helps the author to
craft a marvelous true tale of deception, greed, and violence far stranger than any fiction. Here is
Western history with the bark on!" - Paul Andrew Hutton, author of The Undiscovered Country

What began as a vicious internal conflict among the Creek Indians evolved into the Creek War of 1813–1814, which shattered Native American control of the Deep South and led to the infamous Trail of Tears, in which the government forcibly removed the southeastern Indians from their homeland. The episode remains one of the most tragic in American history, leading to the greatest loss of Native American life on what is now U.S. soil. The war also gave Andrew Jackson his first combat leadership role, and his newfound popularity after defeating the Creeks would set him on the path to the White House.

A Brutal Reckoning recovers this forgotten yet essential moment in U.S. history, portraying the vibrant cultures and ways of life of the Creeks and their Indian neighbors before conflict undid them and introducing us to a young Andrew Jackson, a military commander with unbridled ambition, a taste for cruelty, and a fraught sense of honor and duty. Jackson would not have won the war without the help of Native American allies, yet he denied their role and even insisted on their displacement, together with all the Indians of the American South.

The first biography of the great Shawnee leader in more than twenty years, and the first to make clear that his misunderstood younger brother Tenskwatawa was an equal partner in the greatest Indian alliance the United States ever confronted.

In exploring the wars and negotiations that destroyed tribal ways of life even as they created the modern American West, Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. The Earth Is Weeping offers the fullest account to date of how the West was won--and lost.

One of the most intriguing and storied episodes of the Civil War, the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign has heretofore been related only from the Confederate point of view. Moving seamlessly between tactical details and analysis of strategic significance, Peter Cozzens presents a balanced, comprehensive account of a campaign that has long been romanticized but little understood. He offers new interpretations of the campaign and the reasons for Stonewall Jackson's success, demonstrates instances in which the mythology that has come to shroud the campaign has masked errors on Jackson's part, and provides the first detailed appraisal of Union leadership in the Valley Campaign, with some surprising conclusions.

Chickamauga was a battle of missed opportunities, stupendous tactical blunders, and savage fighting. Offering startling new interpretations that challenge the conventional wisdom on key moments of the battle, Cozzens writes movingly of both the heroism and suffering of the common soldiers and of the strengths and tragic flaws of their commanders.

The battles around Chattanooga in the late fall of 1863 were among the most decisive of the Civil War, opening the Deep South to the Union and setting the stage for Atlanta Campaign and the March to the Sea. Cozzens presents the clearest and fullest account to date of these battles that helped turn the tide of the war.

Over twenty thousand Union and Confederate soldiers were lost in the bloody New Year's Battle of Stones River. No Better Place to Die pays tribute to the heroes, the scoundrels, the mistakes, the bravery, and the grief at Stones River.

The only book-length study of the little-known but crucial battles of Iuka and Corinth. In addition to a vivid and detailed battle narrative, Cozzens provides compelling portraits of the campaigns' key leaders.