Dee Brown

Author profile

born

February 28, 1908 in Alberta, LA, The United States

died

December 12, 2002

gender

male

genre

History, Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction

influences

Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, Joseph Conrad

About this author

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Born in Alberta, Louisiana, a sawmill town,Brown grew up in Ouachita County, Arkansas, which experienced an oil boom when he was thirteen. Brown's mother later relocated to Little Rock so he and his brother and two sisters could attend a better high school. The public library became his second home. Reading the three-volume History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark helped him develop an abiding interest in the American West.

While attending home games by the Arkansas Travelers baseball team, he became acquainted with Moses Yellowhorse, a pitcher. His kindness, and a childhood friendship with a Creek boy, caused Brown to reject the portrayals of Indian peoples as violent and backward, which dominated American pop...more Born in Alberta, Louisiana, a sawmill town,Brown grew up in Ouachita County, Arkansas, which experienced an oil boom when he was thirteen. Brown's mother later relocated to Little Rock so he and his brother and two sisters could attend a better high school. The public library became his second home. Reading the three-volume History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark helped him develop an abiding interest in the American West.

While attending home games by the Arkansas Travelers baseball team, he became acquainted with Moses Yellowhorse, a pitcher. His kindness, and a childhood friendship with a Creek boy, caused Brown to reject the portrayals of Indian peoples as violent and backward, which dominated American popular culture at the time.

He worked as a printer and reporter in Harrison, Arkansas, and decided to continue his education at Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway, Arkansas. His mentor, history professor Dean D. McBrien, helped set him on the road to becoming a writer. They traveled west along with other students on two occasions in a Model T Ford. On campus Brown worked as editor of the student newspaper and held a student assistantship in the library. The latter convinced him that he should become a librarian. So, in the middle of the Depression, he set out for George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He worked part-time for J. Willard Marriott, took classes, and married Sally Stroud (another graduate of Arkansas State Teachers College drawn to Washington by the New Deal). Eventually he found a full-time position and became a librarian for the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1934 to 1942.

Brown's first novel was a satire of New Deal bureaucracy, but it was not published due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The publisher suggested "something patriotic" instead. He responded with Wave High the Banner, a fictionalized account of the life of Davy Crockett (who was an acquaintance of his great-grandfather). A few months after its publication, he was drafted into the U.S. Army where he met Martin Schmitt; after the war they collaborated on several works.

During the war, Brown never went overseas, and worked for the United States Department of War as a librarian. From 1948 to 1972, he was an agriculture librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he had gained a master's degree in library science, became a professor, and raised a son, Mitchell, and daughter, Linda. As a part-time writer, he published nine books, three fiction and six nonfiction, by the end of the 1950s. During the 1960s, he completed eight more including The Galvanized Yankees, which Brown described as requiring more research than any of his other books and The Year of the Century: 1876, which he described as his personal favorite.

In 1971 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee became a best-seller. Many readers assumed that Brown was of Indian heritage but, in fact, he was not. He did however come from a family with deep frontier history.

In 1973, he retired in Little Rock, Arkansas and devoted his time to writing. His later works include Creek Mary's Blood, a novel telling of several generations of a family descended from one Creek woman, and Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow, which described the chicanery and romance surrounding the construction of the western railroads. His last book-length work, Way To Bright Star is a picaresque novel set during the Civil War. He never completed its sequel, which was to feature P. T. Barnum and Abraham Lincoln.

Brown died at the age of 94 in Little Rock, Arkansas.[2:] His remains are interred in Urbana, Illinois, along with those of Sally Stroud. The Central Arkansas Library System named a branch library in Little Rock, Arkansas for him.(less)

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Books by Dee Brown

Average rating: 4.16 · 15,182 ratings · 955 reviews · 38 distinct works

	Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West 4.17 avg rating — 14,541 ratings — published 1970 — 51 editions	My rating:
	Creek Marys Blood 4.16 avg rating — 161 ratings — published 1911 — 8 editions	My rating:
	American West 3.93 avg rating — 114 ratings — 6 editions	My rating:
	Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroads 3.77 avg rating — 71 ratings — published 1977 — 11 editions	My rating:
	The Gentle Tamers: Women of the Old Wild West 3.75 avg rating — 44 ratings — published 1958 — 5 editions	My rating:
	The Fetterman Massacre 3.75 avg rating — 28 ratings — published 1970 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Saga of the Sioux: An Adaptation from Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, Dwight Jon Zimmerman (Adapter) 4.17 avg rating — 23 ratings — published 2011	My rating:
	Showdown at Little Big Horn 3.78 avg rating — 23 ratings — published 1964 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Killdeer Mountain 3.41 avg rating — 22 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:
	Wondrous Times On The Frontier 3.61 avg rating — 23 ratings — published 1991 — 5 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Dee Brown

“To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature - the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy grades, the water, the soil, the air itself.”
― Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

tags: european-civilization , indians , nature

4 people liked it

“The white people were as thick and numerous and aimless as grasshoppers, moving always in a hurry but never seeming to get to whatever place it was they were going to.”
― Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

3 people liked it

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Dee Brown

Author profile

combine editionsBooks by Dee Brown

Quotes by Dee Brown

Topics Mentioning This Author

combine editions
Books by Dee Brown