William Hogeland is the author of several books on founding U.S. history--The Whiskey Rebellion, Declaration, and Founding Finance--as well as a collection of essays, Inventing American History. Born in Virginia and raised in Brooklyn, he lives in New York City.
Finalist for the 2017 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished
Writing Award Hogeland breathes new life into a transformative
conflict unknown to most modern Americans but decisive in shaping
the future trajectory of the United States . . . He paints vivid
portraits of leaders such as Blue Jacket (Shawnee) and Little
Turtle (Miami), who were among the most formidable indigenous
adversaries that U.S. --David Preston, The Wall Street Journal In
elegant, authoritative prose packed with lively characters and
hard-won detail, Hogeland tells the strangely unknown story of the
conquest of the American Midwest . . . Autumn of the Black Snake is
a narrative history, often a gripping and even thrilling one . . .
His finest and most disturbing book to date. --Richard Kreitner,
The Nation
Autumn of the Black Snake is a thorough, informative and
entertaining read . . . yet it is also a devastatingly accurate
mirror into our own political souls . . . Hogeland deserves all the
plaudits he can get for writing such an insightful book about the
present by diving so deep into America's past . . . The best
popular histories are the ones that take obscure subjects and make
them not only compelling, but vitally relevant, for lay readers.
--Matthew Rozsa, Salon.com Compelling . . . Hogeland rescues some
colorful key players from obscurity and restores them to the main
narrative of the early American republic. --Amy H. Sturgis,
Reason
[Autumn of the Black Snake is] narrative-driven; carefully
constructed for maximum tension and dramatic payoff . . .
[Hogeland] has situated himself as one of the foremost critics,
outside academia, of the Founders Chic that--in the wake of
Hamilton--remains a remarkably dominant paradigm . . . He also
makes a sustained effort to include Native American perspectives .
. . [and] grapples with the possibilities and limitations of Native
strategy--which is crucial to challenging assumptions about the
inevitability of white conquest . . . --Tom Cutterham, The Junto
Hogeland does a fine job of bringing this untold tale of the U.S.
Army's birth to life . . . It's an intriguing saga of
double-dealing, limited diplomacy, and strong personalities on all
sides . . . Hogeland's writing shines . . . For any reader
interested in early American political or military history, Autumn
of the Black Snake would be a good addition to their bookshelves.
--James A. Percoco, Washington Independent Review of Books Hogeland
grippingly relates the battles over the Ohio Valley between the
fledgling U.S. and a coalition of the Shawnee, Miami, and Delaware
nations . . . Well-known Revolutionary characters (Washington and
Hamilton, for instance) fill Hogeland's pages; so too do colorful,
little-known, and impressively skilled British military figures and
Native Americans . . . Stuffed with detail, Hogeland's solid and
distinctive book fills a significant gap in the narrative history
of the United States. --Publishers Weekly
Tightly focused . . . Hogeland vividly delineates these seminal
personalities, such as the first commander of Washington's Western
army, 'Mad Anthony' Wayne; the Indian leaders Blue Jacket and
Little Turtle as well as the half-white Indian ally, Alexander
McKee . . . An enlightening history of American westward expansion.
--Kirkus Reviews
[Hogeland] spreads a rich tale of land hunger, self-dealing,
betrayal, and change as Colonizers steadily migrated west, pushing
Native tribes out of their traditional hunting and agricultural
demesnes. Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian philosophies clashed while
an unending stream of settlers trekked west. Detailed and . . .
comprehensive. --Edwin Burgess, Library Journal
Hogeland relates . . . [this story] with eloquence and insight into
the motives and actions of each side. This is a scrupulously
balanced account of a formative period in westward expansion. --Jay
Freeman, Booklist
[Hogeland's] story bristles with larger-than-life characters.
--Edward Morris, BookPage
Like all great nonfiction, Autumn of the Black Snake takes the
familiar and turns it upside down and inside out. With clear,
muscular prose, William Hogeland sets the record straight on badly
neglected early American history. He knows his stuff, and his point
of view is fresh and sure-footed. My notion of the republic's
narrative has been forever altered. --Eric Bogosian, actor,
Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright, and author of Operation
Nemesis: The Assassination Plot That Avenged the Armenian
Genocide
William Hogeland is one of the best historians of early America.
His books are pulsating and thought-provoking, and in Autumn of the
Black Snake he marshals his skills to recount a sweeping story of
frontier turbulence. Relating this saga would have been sufficient
for some historians, but Hogeland goes further and lays bare
President Washington's hidden motives. This is history at its best.
The gripping account Hogeland provides is must-reading. --John
Ferling, author of Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War
That Won It and Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged a
Nation
Autumn of the Black Snake is an elegantly written and scrupulously
balanced account of what is sometimes called President George
Washington's Indian war, enhanced with a nuanced and intriguing
recounting of the often dirty politics behind the formation of the
United States Army. I highly recommend this important
--and thoroughly enjoyable--book on these overlooked but crucial
episodes. --Peter Cozzens, author of The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic
Story of the Indian Wars for the American West Some wars America
remembers, some wars we work to forget. William Hogeland gives a
dramatic telling of the war that we have never really talked about,
despite being the war that made us the global military power weare
today. It's a harrowing story, brilliantly told, and a radical
relook at the ragged collective of colonies who fought for their
own liberty and then, once getting it, set out on the warpath, an
empire bent on taking its neighbors' liberty away. --Robert
Sullivan, author of My American Revolution: A Modern Expedition
Through History's Forgotten Battlegrounds and Rats: Observations on
the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants
In this page-turner, the bigger-than-life characters of Little
Turtle, George Washington, Blue Jacket, and Mad Anthony Wayne clash
over the future of the continent at a time when any of them might
have prevailed. A rich and important book. --Kathleen DuVal, author
of Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American
Revolution
William Hogeland's rare talent is turning books into conversation,
and bloodless, impenetrable histories into compelling and strange
narratives. Icons become flawed people who did all sorts of things
for contradictory reasons. The author is a skeptic, political
analyst, and truth teller. Which is all fine, but not nearly as
important as being a brilliant and amusing storyteller. --Paul
Chaat Smith, author of Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong
If you think Custer's Last Stand was the biggest defeat inflicted
on an American army by Native American forces, you should read
William Hogeland's Autumn of the Black Snake. This book describes
one of America's least-known but most important conflicts: the
so-called Northwest Indian War. Hogeland shows how the annihilation
of a large American force by a confederation of tribes caused the
stoic George Washington to cry out in rage and led to the formation
of the Legion of the United States which became the foundation of
the American Army. He argues that this struggle is an ominous
prequel to Imperial America, as greed, nationalism, and ambition
swirl through a cast of amazing characters. In Autumn of the Black
Snake, Hogeland once again manages to write rigorous, original
history in wonderfully colloquial prose. --John Dolan, aka Gary
Brecher, The War Nerd
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