The Chosen and the Damned

Native Americans and the Making of Race in the United States

By: David J. Silverman

Narrated by: James Markert

A sweeping chronicle placing race at the center of Native American U.S. history, from the award-winning author of This Land Is Their Land.

When the colonial era began, Europeans did not consider themselves as “Whites,” and Native Americans did not think of themselves as “Indians.” Yet as a genocidal struggle for America unfolded over the course of generations, all that changed. Euro-Americans developed a sense of racial identity, superiority, and national mission—of being chosen. They contended that Indians were damned to disappear so Whites could spread Christian civilization. Native people countered that the Great Spirit had created Indians and Whites separately and intended America to belong to Indians alone.

In The Chosen and the Damned, acclaimed historian David J. Silverman traces Indian-White racial arguments across four centuries, from the bloody colonial wars for territory to the national wars of extermination justified as “Manifest Destiny"; from the creation of reservations and boarding schools to the rise of the Red Power movement and beyond. In this transformative retelling, Silverman shows how White identity, defined against Indians, became central to American nationhood. He also reveals how Indian identity contributed to Native Americans’ resistance and resilience as modern tribal people, even as it has sometimes pit them against one another on the basis of race.

The epochal story of race in America is typically understood as a Black and White issue. The Chosen and the Damned restores the defining role Native people have played, and continue to play, in our national history.

©2026 David J. Silverman (P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Everything you need to know and Why

I think this book really encapsulates so much of our history and our shared experiences as a nation. Listening to the author decry racism on both sides while also acknowledging every single major horror and obstacle faced by tribes since their interactions with early settlers really gave me a lot to think on. A truly wonderful telling of America from start to Present