Rating: 
Summary: Great story telling
Review: This is a book which captures the reader's interest from Page 1 and keeps it throughout the entire book. It is told in an very easy to read and understandable way, and I believe it portrays very authentic life on the Crow Indian Reservation.
Rating: 
Summary: What a rip off...
Review: Larry Colton must have been hanging around the offices of Sports Illustrated when Gary Smith wrote a poignant, prosaic piece "Shadow of a Nation" about Hardin High School basketball star Jonathan Takes Enemy. The article appeared in a 1990 edition of Sports Illustrated Magazine. Colton's original plan was to write about boys basketball in Crow Agency? Smith beat him to it ten years ago and did a much better job of portraying the challenges young Crow men and women encounter and the role basketball plays in their lives. Colton uses a quote from the Smith article on the page preceding "Part I Preseason." I agree with the reviewer who described the book as "a long magazine article" and who also went on to say "Colton went well over the line in making it his own story." The story is quite compelling without Colton's personal cheap shot asides. "Shadow of a Nation" is a much better read for anyone interested in knowing about basketball and the role it plays in the Crow Indian community.
Rating: 
Summary: Counting Coup by Larry Colton
Review: What a trip! What insight! What a learning experience!Larry Colton's year on the Crow Indian Rez with the Lady Bulldogs of Hardin, Montana HS was more than a basketball read. For sure, I followed 'x's' and 'o's'..but what I got was a side-long glance at life on the rez. Colton has a way that put you in the Nike's and moccasins of these teen Crow girls and their non-indian buds. It's all there: the hope, the hopelessness, the alcoholism, the squalor, the game..and life after basketball. I savored every page. It was a delight that I looked forward to each day. When it ended...I wanted more.
Rating: 
Summary: I guess people like Larry Colton got to make a living
Review: Mr. Colton: 1) don't assume all native americans are alcoholics 2) don't assume were all on welfare or get federal assistance 3) don't assume we all live in dirty neighborhoods 4) don't assume we all play basketball Some of us have gone out in this world an proved that we can be successful in government,medical or whatever career we chose. My advice to Mr. Colton is not to judge the rest of us by one individual storyline. Rez life is what you make of it! it can be a good or bad place, just like any orther place.
Rating:
Summary: briliant, exciting, sad
Review: This is one of the best books that I have read, I am also from a reservation and when Larry Colton started to describe what he saw on the Crow reservation I felt that he was on my reservation decribing it. Everything that Sharon goes through has happened to a lot of people that I know. Everyone has the same dreams that Sharon had: get of the rez and create a better life for your children and yourself then your parents had. But in reality you know that there is very little chance for you to get of the rez and succeed. Like he said there are a lot of factors holding you back. And if you are one of the few to get off, people, your own people are jealious of you and call you an apple or say that you think that you are better than them because you are so called "educated." So that is why people don't go back to the rez and help their people. Larry Colton described almost any reservation in this country, at least the ones I have been to, perfectly. He gained the tribes trust and that is a hard thing to do, when you are taught to hate the whites and not trust them. I would reccomend this book to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Great Sports Story combined with Western Culture
Review: The book is a great sports story but also a great description of the Montana culture and how Indians are treated in the American West. Having grown up in Eastern Montana, I can fully appreciate the World that exists in the Hardin Area. I found the book to be tremendous from both sports and culture standpoints. The author's descriptions of the Western towns are all very vivid and bring the towns and their residents to live. His description of Colstrip with the Montana Power coal mines, housing areas and company gym were accurate and moving. The book combines the great drama of sports storys like Indiana basketball and Titans football with what it is like to grow up in a place Hardin. He is able to bring the young ladies on the team to life and expose his lucky readers to what it is like to live in a mixed Indian/White culture. His work should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the Native American culture in the American West. A great, great book.
Rating:
Summary: Wannabes beware
Review: I've recently read two books on rez life: Ian Frasier's "On the Rez," and this -- better -- book by Larry Colton. "Counting Coup" is ostensibly about senior Sharon LaForge and the Hardin Lady Bulldogs basketball team. But it's real strength is in Colton's depiction of the lives lived off the playing floor on the Crow Reservation. Some parts, I believe, have to be fabricated. His description of Sharon's "Mother from Hell" Karna Fallsdown knocking down shots in a bar while her daughter is playing in the state championships might be accurate, but the author couldn't have been there. But "facts" are somewhat fluid in Indian Country, and Colton's pretty much on target. He sure nailed Hardin, Montana, for what it is. Reading the book, you get to know the characters and you get to care about them. My personal favorite was Stacey "Spacey" Greenwalt, whose quick wit provides much-needed sparks of humor in what is mostly a depressing tale. There's drama, certainly, in the sports reporting of the games. I just wanted the highs of the wins on the basketball court to be accompanied by some highs in the post-game parts of the book. But the rez life highs your read about are drug-induced. That's depressing, but for the most part true. I had hoped Colton would have a SuAnne Big Crow-like story to report, as is told in "On the Rez." (She was also a high school basketball player, a hero and a legend on the Pine Ridge reservation.) But real heroes are hard to find. I'm sure Frasier and Colton take flak from Indians for being middle-aged white guys trying to relate life in Indian country. Some Indians don't even grab the concept of the freedom of the press. They believe "permission" should be granted before a story is told. Clara Nomee, the (former) Crow Tribe chairman, certainly doesn't think the First Amendment applies in her part of America, and Coulton has to go undercover at one point to attend a Crow council meeting. We need more good Indian writers to put these white guys in their place, writers with the guts to tell truthfully and objectively the stories about contemporary reservation life. I'll buy those books. For the record, I spent a year in Hardin in the early 1990s as editor of the weekly newspaper there, and later worked as journalist covering the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota for Indian Country Today newspaper. I'm a middle-aged white guy.
Rating:
Summary: A long magazine article but it's a good read
Review: I enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down. The stories are fascinating and grabbing. I'm a huge basketball fan -- I thought he did a good job of getting at the guts of how the games were played without getting overly hung up in the details that nonfans wouldn't care about. But, I think (a) he went well over the line in making it his own story; (b) he reconstructed people's thought processes or events he didn't observe without even a skeletal explanation of how he got the information. As to the former, some of the stories such as his trip to the sweathouse provided an interesting glimpse at the culture, but there was too much rumination about his own life, his efforts to relate to his own family life, et al. As to the latter, I think it's OK to say in a nonfiction book that I don't know how it really happened but this is how it was related to me. Example: When Stacie crashed her pickup, did she remember what happened and tell him the details? But she was in shock afterwards, so how did she remember the details? I expected an afterword explaining how he gained his understanding of the events. It might have interfered with the novel-like flow but it would give him more credibility. I guess the best that can be said about the gossipy tone is that he's an equal opportunity trasher. As to a point another reviewer raised -- he did explain why the book was delayed -- because he was disheartened by Sharon's apparent failures. Probably it indicates he got too involved with the subject emotionally, but I can't say I blame him. My sense is there's enough credibility in the book to recommend it for people to gain a better understanding of the Crows and the ethnic-racial tensions in their environment, but I wouldn't take everything at face value.
Rating:
Summary: journalistic detachment with an irresponsible agenda
Review: This book is poorly written. It also smacks of an individual wanting to be a part of something that he can never understand. Larry Colton came to the Crow Rez as an outsider, and will always be an outsider, regardless of who "adopted" him into the tribe. Spending fifteen months in a community doesn't give someone the expertise that it would take to create a sensitive and accurate portrayal of the complexities of modern Crow-white relations or the Crow fixation on high school sports. As a Crow woman from the same generation as Sharon, who grew up with her, though certainly not a close friend, I found this book to be disturbing, unrealistic, and inaccurate. Larry Colton took advantage of the trust bestowed upon him and tore apart a community. He didn't have permission from everyone in the book to tell their stories, and often presented common gossip as "journalism". Colton takes a skewed view of Crow society. His views on fatherhood and the role of the male in contemporary Crow society are melodramatic and unfair at best. I found this book to be a very depressing piece of reading and didn't relate much to it other than knowing the individuals portrayed, even though I grew up with similar issues. I urge everyone not to buy into Colton's facade of journalistic detachment, and boycott this book. He saw only what he wanted to see when he came to our community, and used individuals to further his own career. I think he's an opportunist on Indian culture, like so many other white authors, but more dangerous because he disguises his true goal in attempting to present a "fair" account. I find the book irresponsible.
Rating:
Summary: Best Sports Book Ever.
Review: Being from Texas I never thought that a book about high school sports would ever have me as riveted as "Friday Night Lights." How wrong could I have been? My chance purchase of this amazing book while Christmas shopping turned out to make my literary year. Larry Colton gets swept away by the struggle of Sharon LaForge and her Hardin High teammates to capture a state championship and a future. His enthusiasm grabs the reader by the collar and drags them along on a mesmerizing and melancholy tale. This is not just a story about a championship basketball team. But it's about individual players, their families and their communities. I read this book in one sitting and found my heart pounding every time the Lady Bulldogs stepped on the court. But unlike any other book I've read I found myself more nervous about the ultimate fates of the players themselves. This book is truly a masterpiece; one I have already recommended to many friends. Read it and discover a world that 95% of Americans probably never even knew existed.
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