S. C. Gwynne

Describes the actions of both whites and Comanches during a 40-year war over territory, in a story that begins with the kidnapping of a white girl, who grew up to marry a Comanche chief and have a son, Quanah, who became a great warrior.

Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

Empire of the Summer Moon

The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine

His Majesty's Airship

An account of General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson's rise to prominence during the Civil War.

The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

Rebel Yell

From the bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of the Summer Moon comes a stunning historical tale of the rise and fall of the world’s largest airship—and the doomed love story between an ambitious British officer and a married Romanian Princess at its heart. The tragic story of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular hydrogen-fueled fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty’s Airship, historian S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong. Airships, those airborne leviathans that occupied center stage in the world in the first half of the twentieth century, were a symbol of the future. R101 was not just the largest aircraft ever to have flown and the product of the world’s most advanced engineering—she was also the lynchpin of an imperial British scheme to link by air the far-flung areas of its empire from Australia to India, South Africa, Canada, Egypt, and Singapore. No one had ever conceived of anything like this. R101 captivated the world. There was just one problem: beyond the hype and technological wonders, these big, steel-framed, hydrogen-filled airships were a dangerously bad idea. Gwynne’s chronicle features a cast of remarkable—and often tragically flawed—characters, including Lord Christopher Thomson, the man who dreamed up the Imperial Airship Scheme and then relentlessly pushed R101 to her destruction; Princess Marthe Bibesco, the celebrated writer and glamorous socialite with whom he had a long affair; and Herbert Scott, a national hero who had made the first double crossing of the Atlantic in any aircraft in 1919—eight years before Lindbergh’s famous flight—but who devolved into drink and ruin. These historical figures—and the ship they built, flew, and crashed—come together in a grand tale that details the rocky road to commercial aviation written by one of the best popular historians writing today.

Quizá al lector le sea más familiar el nombre de los apaches o el de los sioux, pero la gran tribu guerrera india, la última que resistió al hombre blanco, fue la de los comanches. Extraordinarios jinetes, enemigos terribles y de impresionante capacidad estratégica, los comanches fueron los últimos en vender sus tierras, los últimos en aceptar la vida en las reservas, los últimos en defender un país que moría con ellos. Este libro, una obra maestra de la narración histórica y épica, relata dos historias paralelas: la de una tribu que simbolizó la cultura autóctona americana; y la de su último jefe, Quanah Parker, hijo de un comanche y una prisionera blanca, el hombre que, al mando de solo tres mil comanches en su última época, plantó cara a todo el ejército estadounidense. Como telón de fondo, la guerra de Secesión y cuatro décadas de intensa historia, bajo el ataque de los colonos que trataban de conquistar Tejas, los españoles que llegaban desde México y los franceses que presionaban desde Luisiana. “Un libro que te deja polvo y sangre en los vaqueros” The New York Times Finalista del Premio Pulitzer 2011 y del National Books Critic Circle Award S. C. Gwynne es periodista, licenciado en historia por la universidad de Princeton y máster en literatura por la Johns Hopkins. Entre 1988 y 2000 fue redactor y editor de la revista Time, y más tarde editor ejecutivo en Texas Monthly. También ha escrito para The New York Times y la revista Harper’s. Actuamente vive en Austin (Tejas) y sus crónicas pueden leerse en el diario Dallas Morning.

S. C. Gwynne

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