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Dances with Wolves

4.07 of 5 stars 4.07 · rating details · 6,458 ratings · 200 reviews

Ordered to hold an abandoned army post, John Dunbar found himself alone, beyond the edge of civilization. Thievery and survival soon forced him into the Indian camp, where he began a dangerous adventure that changed his life forever. Relive the adventure and beauty of the incredible movie, DANCES WITH WOLVES.

From the Paperback edition.

Paperback, 304 pages

Published November 1st 1997 by Ballantine Books (first published 1988)

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Oct 02, 2011 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: michael-blake, fiction

I saw the movie first, and then decided to read the book. The book answers many questions the movie leaves, some of which I hadn't even considered.

For instance, why are there no soldiers at the fort? The book explains it.

Why was he even offered the position? The book tells all.

One of the things I wondered was why he spent the night outside the camp after they found the buffalo. Again, the book details why that was.

The book is very good, much better than the movie. Even though the movie was three...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Yvann S rated it 4 of 5 stars

"He had geared himself for criminals, a gang of lawbreakers, burglars who needed punishing. What he found instead was a pageant, a pageant of action so breathtaking that, like a kid at his first big parade, the lieutenant was powerless to do anything but stand there and watch it go by."

Lt. John Dunbar voyages west to take up a post at the western frontier, his life's ambition. Finding the fort deserted and himself the only white man within a week's travel, he sets about restoring the fort to app...more "He had geared himself for criminals, a gang of lawbreakers, burglars who needed punishing. What he found instead was a pageant, a pageant of action so breathtaking that, like a kid at his first big parade, the lieutenant was powerless to do anything but stand there and watch it go by."

Lt. John Dunbar voyages west to take up a post at the western frontier, his life's ambition. Finding the fort deserted and himself the only white man within a week's travel, he sets about restoring the fort to appropriate standards and surveying the nearby lands. When he encounters the local Indian tribe, his diplomatic attempts are a little more open-minded than most soldiers of his time, and he slowly drawn into the Indian camp...

The overall arc, the idea, is a strong and beautiful one, and Blake went out on a limb to write a book which is overwhelming positive about the Native American tribe (assumed to be Sioux), particularly in comparison to the US Army. The novel is gentle; the writing is not complex or particularly literary. The reader is lulled into the huge expanse of the plains, Dunbar's solitude at Ford Sedgewick, and equally the excitement of the buffalo hunt, the repeated attempts to steal Dunbar's beloved horse and the conflict with the Pawnee grips the reader. I found the book easy to keep reading but also quite easy to put down and pick up again.

Faults? Lt. Dunbar is too good a man. It's too easy for him to move into the Comanche world - Kicking Bird comments on it very directly (I can't find the quote now). He never seemed to do anything selfish, foolish, or wrong. I felt this novel didn't really know what it was, and that feeling lingered throughout. Was it an Army v Indians frontier adventure? A romance (there was more than enough gentle romantic language for it to qualify)? A social commentary?

The film made from this book (which originally started life as a speculative screenplay, which may explain the fairly simple style of writing) won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture (first Western film to win since 1931), Best Director and Best Sound. Sounds like I need to add that to my LoveFilm request list!(less)

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May 17, 2012 Andrew Patterson rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is a wonderful novel written by Michael Blake about a man in the Civil War. This books main character is Lieutenant John Dunbar who injures his foot during the war thus distracting the confederates on his side. Later, he travels to his new army post and finds it abandoned, he then procceds to rebuild it where he encounters the Sioux tribe of that area. He finds a tribe woman by the name of "Stands With A Fist". She is injured so he takes her back to the tribe to be treated and encounters th...more

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Apr 12, 2012 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Very nicely written, great little book. I saw the movie first, but so long ago I don't remember it well (other than liking it). The book seems similar to, and better than, the movie. But I have the same reservation for both. I am wary about books that romanticize the Native way of life and make the White way of life seem completely negative. Not for a second do I mean to excuse the genocide and cultural annihilation that took place on the Plains. But you don't have to believe in the complete goo...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book because the movie is one of my all time favorites. I happened to hear the musical score to the movie while I was listeing to NPR a week or so ago, and was reminded of the film. The musical score was extremely powerful, and lifted the film above what it might have been without it. I wanted to see if the book was better than the movie, which is most often the case. Here, I don't think that is so. While the book is very good, the movie was certainly more stunning in its visual pres...more

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May 01, 2011 Devin 6th rated it 5 of 5 stars

I really liked the book it was good in the begining but in the end I didn't like it because it's when the white man tryed to kill the idains but they didn't I would recimend this book to any one because it was really good it was about a guy named John dunbar he was in army and his legs got cut up really bad and they were going to cut his leg off but he got up when they weren't looking and he healed and one of the sargents sent him off to a post and he was suposte to stay there until the rest of...more

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Mar 28, 2013 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Michael Blake states, in the Afterward of this book, that writing the novel "Dances With Wolves" was relatively painless. Part of the explanation for this is that he had been a struggling writer for some time until, at the age of 42, he started this, his first novel. It is also because he had a lifetime of preparation leading up to putting his most closely held interests in print. He has always been deeply concerned with environmental issues, and has a love of horses and Indian lore. His annotat...more Michael Blake states, in the Afterward of this book, that writing the novel "Dances With Wolves" was relatively painless. Part of the explanation for this is that he had been a struggling writer for some time until, at the age of 42, he started this, his first novel. It is also because he had a lifetime of preparation leading up to putting his most closely held interests in print. He has always been deeply concerned with environmental issues, and has a love of horses and Indian lore. His annotated listing of selected books on the history of the West, including many classics, shows his depth of reading in this regard. So the words flew onto the blank pages when he wrote about Lieutenant Dunbar, a transplanted Civil War officer finding himself isolated from the rest of the army on the prairies, encountering a tribal unit of Comanches, a fierce race of beings who vehemently defended their rights to rule over their homeland.

Blake begins Lt. Dunbar's odyssey of discovery and self-realization during 1863, while the Civil War was still raging. This choice of story dating coincided with the time when the Comanche way of life was experiencing an initial exposure to forces which spelled doom to their ages-old way of life. Reviewer's note: In historical terms, the Comanche had prospered, and even dominated the southern plains in the face of colonization by the Spanish and Mexican governments. Things had started changing after North Americans started settling in large numbers in Texas, especially after the territory gained Statehood. The Comanche started to see serious resistance as the Americans spread their farmsteads across their raiding and hunting areas, but the Indians got a much-needed breather when the North Americans became preoccupied in their Civil War. It was only a matter of time before the U.S. Army would be reconstituted in the Southwest, to protect settlers and to safeguard the transcontinental railroad routes, while "professional" bands of hunters would be set loose on the prairies to kill wholesale all types of wildlife. It becomes clear that changes in the balance of power in that part of the West were becoming unstoppable by the time that the novel ends.

What makes the book so compelling is that it is not presented like a typical history lesson. It is the story of an individual who stumbles into a completely different civilization, whose principles are antithetical to his, and is able to share mutual respect among those whom he would have earlier thought as enemies. In the end, his new, deep personal relationships produce a profound transformation of his goals in life and his personal values. He almost forgets where he came from, but is dragged back to reality before the end of the book, when he must face a physically painful repatriation. Lt. Dunbar by then is no longer interested in defending his country against its declared enemies in the Confederacy and among the Indians. He isn't able to convince his skeptical countrymen that he is one of them, and in the end he doesn't really care because all of other the white characters in the book are depicted as cynical, cruel slobs. In answer to any questions about the image presented of Lt. Dunbar's white peers, Blake states that he was probably too easy on them.

The highly successful movie version of "Dances With Wolves" adheres faithfully to the book's theme of individuals from distinctly separate civilizations finding common ground amid the spoilation of nature and the destruction of a way of life. Blake was an old friend of Kevin Costner, since the actor appeared in a production, in the early 1980's, of a movie based on a Blake screenplay. Costner went on to stardom while Blake continued to struggle to earn a living. Costner knew Blake's novel would make a terrific movie, and worked hard for several years to produce it, starting filming in 1989. Blake wrote the screenplay adaptation and went on to win a Golden Globe and an Oscar. Hollywood is famous for butchering stories while putting them on film, but in this case the novelist was completely happy with the filmed version of the story, which adhered closely to the book's intent. There were inevitable differences, including the substitution of the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota for the Comanche in Texas.

That substitution, based largely on logistical filming considerations, didn't upset Blake because the story of the Western Indian tribes played out repeatedly in almost the same tragic fashion, regardless of tribal band or geographic location. Thus, the loss of Comanche autonomy in the 1860's was mirrored by the loss of Sioux freedom as a horse culture in the 1870's, as documented in the masterful "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown (Henry Holt and Company, 1971), rightly described by Blake as a milestone work for understanding what really happened in the West at the end of the nineteenth century.

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Feb 22, 2013 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Great book! I don't know where I was but somehow I missed the movie was made from a novel. Seeing this come on TV the other day, I decided to check into whether this was based on something other than just a movie script. Luckily this book was available at our local library.

I think one of the reasons why the movie is so great is because it followed the book so well. In fact, in reading up, I read the author actually wanted to write this as a movie script and was told it'd have a better chance of...more

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Dec 04, 2011 Zoe rated it 4 of 5 stars

In my opinion the book is always better than the movie. I loved this movie (which came right in the middle of my Costner phase), so I figured I would probably enjoy the book too.

This book does not disappoint! It is a beautifully written story that made me laugh and cry. There were parts of this book that made me truly terrified of what was going to happen next because I knew how I wanted it to end, and I was worried that it wouldn't!

Unfortunately, it didn't end as I wanted it to, but only becau...more

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Jul 30, 2011 Selenitachan added it · review of another edition

Que deciros de ésta magnífica obra de arte... nada más y nada menos que mi libro favorito. Éste libro sin duda alguna marcó definitivamente mi vida, haciendo que me enamorara más aún de la lectura.

En este libro te embarcas en los sentimientos de soledad del teniente, y, como poco a poco, sus sueños y su vida van cambiando, de tal manera que empieza a sentir una gran fascinación por los indios y su modo de vida. Dunbar aprende que en la vida no solo es preocupación por el tiempo y la guerra, si...more

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May 26, 2012 Aria Soltani rated it 3 of 5 stars

I didn't want to read this book as I only had the Swedish version of it. I kept stalling reading it as I thought to myself; "One day you are bound to run into the English original at a flea market or old book store". But when my attempt to read the book Rule 34 went horribly wrong I decided I had to read SOMETHING until my next batch of books arrived, and therefore picked this one up.

Dances with Wolves is the story of a lieutenant during the American civil war whom is transferred to a post he fi...more

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Feb 01, 2011 April rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm impressed with the author, who read books on Indian history for years and years before writing this book, his first novel.

I've long enjoyed reading about Native Americans, and keeping their history alive in the minds of the collective public is incredibly important. This book portrayed Comanches, though the movie portrayed Sioux. Blake noted the difference in the afterword but also said he felt the change was okay because their "essential components of spirit and wisdom" are the same.

Other d...more

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Sep 10, 2011 Birupakhya Dash rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 15, 2008 Janet rated it 4 of 5 stars

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$Tommy /|\$

Dec 10, 2010 Tommy /|\ rated it 5 of 5 stars

As I had seen (and fell completely in love with the storyline) the movie - I had a fairly good idea of what I was getting into by reading the book. However, there were small changes in various places -- include tow huge plot changes that made the novel a nearly fresh experience for me towards the end. In the final notes, the author noted that he wrote this more as a depiction of daily life among the Plains Indians, and less of a story about how an American Union soldier changed his manner of thi...more

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Jan 28, 2009 Julie rated it 2 of 5 stars

I decided to read this book because I wanted to see how it differed from the film. Usually a novel is so much better than the film adaptation because it is filled with much more detail and depth. However, with this book I would have to say if you've seen the film you've basically read the book. There are some minor points that are different (for example in the book the Indians are Comanche not Sioux) and there are some minor scenes that are a little different, but overall the film followed the b...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Saad Rehman Shah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I started with the movie, but the movie wasn't engaging enough so I went for the book. And the book was great! It told all those little details which mattered so much, which though were shown in the movie, but somehow never got the attention. The book was very entertaining without being too dramatic, the characters were very human, yet very remarkable. Though the author didn't pull me in like I was there, but that's something one can't expect from every author.

All in all, a very accessible, ent...more

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Jan 26, 2013 Jane Sadek rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned, signed

Though I usually read a book before I watch the movie, I saw the movie first with this one. In fact, I didn't get around to it until years later,when a friend drug me to a reading by Michael Blake. WOW! The movie was a faint memory by then and I was able to start fresh - almost. Kevin Costner was indelibly marked in my mind as John Dunbar. Perfect casting and an incredible job of acting.

Most of the book was faithfully followed in the movie, except for the end, it takes another tack - a more natu...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Next is Dances with Wolves by Michael Blake. John Dunbar is assigned to an abandoned frontier army fort, with a wolf and a horse and himself. Alone. And no one alive knows he is there. Kicking Bird and Wind in His Hair, Comanche Indians, try to steal his horse, but it escapes and returns to him. They become fascinated with him, the Man as White as Snow, and often visit him, smoking and drinking coffee. He tries to learn their language, as they all wait for the buffalo. Slowly, he becomes Indian,...more

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Jun 10, 2010 Nana rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 27, 2012 Cathrine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fortunately I had well forgotten the movie I saw years ago, without a shred of memory as to it's content, other then based in the west with Indians.
I just happened to stumble onto this book for .50cents in a European book shop. English books are rare enough, for sale even rarer, so I scooped it up.
That was only a couple days ago and I gobbled up this small novel in my very scare free-time. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The freedom the man felt time and again, brought me to tears on occasion.
I woul...more

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Sep 04, 2012 Kristin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, western

After watching the movie many times (beautiful visuals, great story, wonderful score by John Barry), I read this book after managing to get my hands on a copy.

The story of Dancing with Wovles is engrossing. Lt. John Dunbar is a likeable character, and he symbolizes the ideal representative of the white culture interacting with the Native plains people. One improvement upon the movie is that Blake provides multiple characters' motivations by changing the point of view frequently.

The book was an e...more

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Jun 15, 2009 Karen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: multicultural-literature

Dances with Wolves, is a Native American film in wich the main character, sorry forgot his name(a white man), is sent to an abandoned fort as a joke since he is not respected in the U.S. military. This is during the "colonization" period in which the Native Americans are being eradicated steadily across the continent. This story is about how our character befriends the local tribe or nation of the original Americans. And how these people eventually have to flee west in order to avoid the massacr...more

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Feb 19, 2011 Sharon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Absolutely lovely book- definitely worth reading even if you've seen the movie. There's a bit of backstory here that fleshes out the plot in a much more satisfying way, especially with Stands With a Fist and her late husband.

I wondered why Hollywood swapped out the Comanches for the Sioux in the movie, and now I know why (though not from this book) If you care to read something more historical (but defintely less lyrical), pick up the book "Empire of the Summer Moon." The likihood of John Dunba...more

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Jul 20, 2009 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book has particular sentimental value to me as I read it my sophmore year in high school in place of All Quiet on the Western Front. My teacher, Chris Harris (who I was secretly in love with, said that since my mom was sick and dying I could choose a book of my own to read because the content in All Quiet was too disturbing for me. I will never forget his kindness and compassion toward me and this is the book I chose. The movie had just come out not too long prior to this and I wanted to re...more

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Apr 13, 2012 Shacoria rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I decided to read this book because it's somewhat of a classic and the movie based off of it won an academy award. I was not disappointed by it. I didn't think I would like it, but I actually really enjoyed the style the book is written in. The author kept me interested throughout. The whole storyline of Stands With A Fist and Dances With Wolves falling in love was pretty obvious to me though. From the moment they revealed that she was white, I knew she was going to fall in love with him. Also,...more

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Jul 29, 2011 Juanita Carter added it · review of another edition

This book took me about two days to read, it is not difficult or too dense by any means. Some things about this book seemed like a stereotypical western, but if you liked the movie you may like the book. I thought that the characters were developed better in the book than the movie, but there isn't an insane amount of depth. The author does contrast isolation with belonging and living in society to living in community. Another story about the dramatic loss of Native American culture during the 1...more

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Aug 06, 2012 Janne Paananen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tanssii susien kanssa oli minulle tärkein elokuva nuoruudessani. Pidin sitä hyvin pitkään parhaana elokuvana, jonka olin koskaan nähnyt. Tiedä sitten, miltä tuntuisi katsoa se jälleen näin monien vuosien jälkeen. Kirjaa lukiessa tulvikin paljon muistikuvia elokuvasta. Ja ne olivat usein itse tekstiä vahvempia. Tarinahan on kaunis ja se on kirjoitettu erittäin helppolukuisesti. Jopa liian helppolukuisesti. Elokuvan aikaan saamat tunteet, värit, hajut ja maut olivat niin vahvoja, ettei Michael Bla...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Joyce rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 50-books-challenge-2012, books-i-own, favorites

Off course I saw the movie and it's one of my favorites of all-time. I had this book on my shelve for a while and with the theme I have this month I finally had the perfect reason to read it. We follow John Dunbar in his journey to discovering the Comache. The great thing about this book is that the American soldiers aren't depicted as heroes and the Comache as bad guys. I got a lot of respect for the Comache and disrespect for the American soldiers. They acted really cowardly and it really brok...more

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Apr 16, 2011 adri patamoma rated it 4 of 5 stars

pense numa história linda e bem contada -- se você já viu o filme baseado neste livro, você sabe bem do que estou falando ;-) o único porém deste livro é a escrita do michael blake, que é bastante exagerada -- o mundo dele é todo em preto e branco; as coisas boas são ótimas, e as ruins são horríveis, e esse exagero o tempo todo acaba cansando -- fica tudo (inclusive os personagens) romantizado demais da conta. fora isso, que história bela, a deste livro! adorei :-)

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About Michael Blake

I am the author of several novels, including the New York Times #1 Bestseller Dances With Wolves and winner of the 1991 Academy Award.

More about Michael Blake...

Books by Michael Blake

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“He had fallen in love with this wild, beautiful country and everything it contained. It was the kind of love people dream of having with other people: selfless and free of doubt, reverent and everlasting.” — 7 people liked it

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