Empire of the Summer Moon

S. C. Gwynne tells two stories: the rise and fall of the Comanches, and the life of Cynthia Ann Parker, a white girl taken captive who later married a Comanche chief, and of her son Quanah, who became the tribe's last chief. Gwynne credits Comanche fighting skill with deciding when the American West opened. Superb horsemen, the Comanches stopped Spain's push north from Mexico and French expansion west from Louisiana, and drove back the Texas frontier when settlers arrived from the east. The narrative takes in a four-decade war, Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the railroads and the destruction of the buffalo herds. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Joe Rogan called it a fantastic book about the Comanches.