A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South

Cozzens (Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation) presents a history of the brutal 1813–14 war known as the Creek War, which pitted the Muscogee (Creek) Nation against U.S. forces. This conflict, which took place in present-day Alabama and along the Gulf Coast, was led by Andrew Jackson and resulted in the deaths of over a thousand Muscogee people. Jackson ultimately forced the Muscogee to surrender over 21 million acres in present-day southern Georgia and central Alabama. The conflict provided Jackson with his first combat leadership role and precipitated the 1830 Indian Removal Act, wherein the U.S. government forcibly displaced nearly all Indigenous peoples from east of the Mississippi River to barren western lands. Drawing upon original source documents, Cozzens provides a balanced account of the horrors enacted upon the Muscogee people during the United States’ relentless westward expansion. Narrator Mark Bramhall steadily guides listeners through Cozzens’s work, employing subtle vocal shifts to capture the words of the various writers and researchers whom Cozzens cites. His skillful voice-acting techniques—both informative and engaging—enrich Cozzens’s extensively researched account.