Geronimo Robert M. Utley

Renowned for ferocity in battle, legendary for an uncanny ability to elude capture, feared for the violence of his vengeful raids, the Apache warrior Geronimo captured the public imagination in his own time and remains a figure of mythical proportion today. This thoroughly researched biography by a renowned historian of the American West strips away the myths and rumours that have long obscured the real Geronimo and presents an authentic portrait of a man with unique strengths and weaknesses and a destiny that swept him into the fierce storms of history. Historian Robert Utley draws on an array of new sources and his own lifelong research on the Mountain West and white-Indian conflicts of the late nineteenth century to create an updated, accurate, and highly exciting narrative of Geronimo's life. Utley unfolds the story through the alternating perspectives of whites and Apaches, and he arrives at a more nuanced understanding of Geronimo's character and motivation than ever before. What it was like to be a warrior-in-training, why Indians as well as whites feared Geronimo, how Geronimo maintained his freedom, and why he finally surrendered - the answers to these questions and many more fill the pages of this irresistible volume.

Robert M. Utley is the award-winning author of seventeen books on Western American history. During his career with the National Park Service he served as chief historian and assistant director.

“Robert M. Utley’s scholarly biography of ‘the most famous North American Indian of all time’ is treading… on sensitive ancestral ground – but strides in fearlessly. For this slender book is a potent challenge to Geronimo’s status within the ‘heroic mould’ of noble Indian chiefs such as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse... Utley has dissected [Geronimo’s life] with forensic rigour… If you are intrigued by the real Apache behind the burning ranches and scattered corpses of Cormac McCarthy’s novels or John Ford’s films, then this is a valuable and recommended read.” Brian Schofield, The Sunday Times 

“Meticulous and finely researched. . . . Utley achieves his goal of humanizing Geronimo, fastidiously showing the transition from bloodthirsty raider to subservient prisoner of war, fair attraction, and, eventually, entrepreneur.” Publishers Weekly

“Utley’s long career as a Western American historian, his association with the National Park Service, and his close attention to the topographic detail of the Apache homeland guarantee a true picture of the man who was neither hero nor thug. Geronimo was never a chief, but he had a mysterious, surreal power that left his people in awe, and often in fear, of him.” - Kirkus Reviews