The Custer Reader

"Interest in the career of George Armstrong Custer has been unflagging since his death in battle near the Little Bighorn River in 1876, and books and articles about him have flowed steadily. It is time, then, that a diligent scholar and able editor should seek out the best that has been written by and about Custer, both by contemporaries and modern scholars, and package it for those who thrive on Custeriana as well as for those who would simply like to know more about him. Mr. Hutton has done a fine job of presenting both the man and the many myths that have grown up around the boy general of the Civil War and the colorful Indian fighter of the plains."--Washington Times "[These] well-illustrated pages contain just about everything you'd want to know about the impetuous, courageous but not overly clever [Custer]. . . . Some of the most gripping reports are those of officers who actually participated in the fatal expedition and its maneuvers in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory. The Indians get their word in, too, most notably a grisly account of the 1876 battle by an eighty-year-old Cheyenne woman named Kate Bighead. . . . Certainly the dashing, war-loving Long Hair--which is what the Indians called their implacable enemy--never seemed more vivid a figure than in this unusual anthology."--Parade Magazine "Very seldom is a book a pure joy to read; The Custer Reader is such a book. It offers standard texts and fresh insights about the United States' most famous--and most maligned--military figure."--True West. "May well become the definitive book on this mythical and thoroughly controversial figure."--AB Bookman Weekly. Paul Andrew Hutton, the editor, is an associate professor of history at the University of New Mexico. His books include the prize-winning Phil Sheridan and His Army (Nebraska, 1985).

Here is Custer as seen by himself, his contemporaries, and leading scholars. Combining first-person narratives, essays, and photographs, this book provides a complete introduction to Custer's controversial personality and career and the evolution of the Custer myth.

"The Custer literature is voluminous and most of it is highly controversial. Through the tangle of charges and countercharges Jay Monaghan cuts a clear path in his fresh account of Custer's whole career. Where possible, Monaghan relies on original sources, and he appraises them with the sound judgment of the practiced historian he is. He is sympathetic with Custer but does not hesitate to show the man's foibles and failures. He presents no attorney's brief and yet he disproves a number of ill-founded accusations. . . ."

Some historians think he may have been the finest cavalry officer in the Union Army.

From George Armstrong Custer's graduation from West Point to the daring cavalry charges that propelled him to the rank of General and national fame at age twenty-three to an unlikely romance with his eventual wife Libbie Bacon, Custer's exploits are the stuff of legend. Always leading his men from the front with a personal courage seldom seen before or since, he was a key part of nearly every major engagement in the east. Not only did Custer capture the first battle flag taken by the Union Army and receive the white flag of surrender at Appomattox, but his field generalship at Gettysburg against Confederate cavalry General Jeb Stuart had historic implications in changing the course of that pivotal battle. For decades, historians have looked at Custer strictly through the lens of his death on the frontier, casting him as a failure. While the events that took place at the Little Big Horn are illustrative of America's bloody westward expansion, they have unjustly eclipsed Custer's otherwise extraordinarily life and outstanding career. This biography of thundering cannons, pounding hooves, and stunning successes tells the story of one of history's most dynamic and misunderstood figures. Award-winning historian Thom Hatch reexamines Custer's early career to rebalance the scales and show why Custer's epic fall could never have happened without the spectacular rise that made him an American legend.

'The Custer story began in controversy and in dispute; because of Custer's death in a blaze of glory that became the setting for propaganda which caught and held, and still holds, the imagination of the American people. What began in controversy and dispute has ended in Myth; a myth built, like other myths, upon actual data and events, magnified, distorted and disproportioned by fiction, invention, imagination and speculation.

A New York Times bestseller from the author of Band of Brothers: The biography of two fighters forever linked by history and the battle at Little Bighorn. On the sparkling morning of June 25, 1876, 611 men of the United States 7th Cavalry rode toward the banks of Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory, where three thousand Indians stood waiting for battle. The lives of two great warriors would soon be forever linked throughout history: Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, and General George Armstrong Custer. Both were men of aggression and supreme courage. Both became leaders in their societies at very early ages. Both were stripped of power, in disgrace, and worked to earn back the respect of their people. And to both of them, the unspoiled grandeur of the Great Plains of North America was an irresistible challenge. Their parallel lives would pave the way, in a manner unknown to either, for an inevitable clash between two nations fighting for possession of the open prairie.

Son of the Morning Star is the nonfiction account of General Custer from the great American novelist Evan S. Connell. Custer's Last Stand is among the most enduring events in American history--more than one hundred years after the fact, books continue to be written and people continue to argue about even the most basic details surrounding the Little Bighorn. Evan S. Connell, whom Joyce Carol Oates has described as "one of our most interesting and intelligent American writers," wrote what continues to be the most reliable--and compulsively readable--account of the subject. Connell makes good use of his meticulous research and novelist's eye for the story and detail to re-create the heroism, foolishness, and savagery of this crucial chapter in the history of the West.

Custer and the Great Controversy was the first book to focus on the origins of what has come to be called the Custer myth. The Battle of the Little Bighorn has always been wrapped in mystery and controversy because none of Custer's men survived to tell what happened, because press accounts circulated much misinformation and editors politicized the event, because popular writers repeated the errors of journalists, because a court of inquiry issued in bitter debate, and because Indian testimony was hard to gauge. This book, originally published in 1962, helps the reader understand the sources of the confusion and controversy surrounding the Custer fight and the beginning of the legend.

This historical fiction dramatically tells the story of the Battle of the Little Bighorn through the eyes of ordinary soldiers and warriors and vividly describes the fatigue, grime, sweat, fear, heartbreak, and carnage of frontier warfare."A Road We Do Not Know" . . . brings a fresh and moving sensibility to the story of Custer, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse, those icons whose lives came together at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. A fine novel, compellingly written.W.E.B. Griffin, author of "Brotherhood of War" Frederick Chiaventone tells an important, gripping and instructive tale.Winston F. Groom, author of "Forrest Gump"