Even when Peter Matthiessen writes the text in a book full of photographs ("The Tree Where Man Was Born," with Eliot Porter's pictures of Africa) he goes for literature as well as information. This is both a strength and possible drawback in the 600 gray, unillustrated pages of "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse."

Matthiessen's literary art pulls you along. There is the resonance with history, as he recalls the 19th-century massacre of Indians at Wounded Knee while describing the past decade's often violent events in the same Pine Ridge reservation area of South Dakota. There is the skilled interweaving of past and present individual voices to tell a story of treachery, corruption, and courage on and off the reservation, in and out of government. There is the distinctive presence of the author's own voice, letting admiration, indignation, and sarcasm glint through. The result: an eloquent recital of wrongs...