Custer Resources

Looking to learn about something completely different yet tangential to what I’ve been reading off and on for the past few years, I decided to investigate Little Big Horn. The first step I did was a google search to find out what interested parties out there considered the best books on the subject. I jotted down a half-dozen, then went to Amazon. I perused the reviews, generally discounting the five-star and one-star reviews, and let my gut tell me which ones to read.

I selected two fairly recent books: The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of Little Bighorn (2011) by Nathaniel Philbrick, and A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn – the Great Battle of the American West (2009) by James Donovan.

Both apparently follow modern publishing trends by cramming as many phrases and clauses into a title that can possibly fit on a cover.

Both also were engrossing, fast-paced quickreads. I burned through both books in seven days apiece, probably averaging an hour a day, 40 or 50 pages a sitting. I found both difficult to put down. Both drew me in and fascinated me with facts, and feeling on that hill with Custer and his men, I could not get the thought out of my head how I would have reacted in that situation.

The only problem was I read them in the wrong order: I read Philbrick before Donovan when I should have read Donovan before Philbrick.

Donovan’s book was more straightforward, fact-driven, military-minded. He doesn’t pick winners or losers. Just the facts, ma’am. Yes, he critiques some of the decisions made during the battle and the lead-up to it. Actually, a lot is critiqued. But he doesn’t pre-judge Custer. Nor his men, both the courageous and the cowardly, nor the Indians, both the honorable and the downright savage, nor the politicians, both the honorable and the downright savage (see what I did there?). This book held more of what I wanted to know: the mission, the events of the day, the order of battle, armaments, maneuvers, the personalities of the warriors on both sides. Plus a little background, but not overkill and under too powerful a magnifying glass. This book did not disappoint. I gave it a solid A.

Philbrick’s work was more poetical, more of a narrative (in that the author himself had a narrative he wanted to follow). Dreams, the interconnectedness of characters, the intertwining of lives by fate and accident. It is a more politically-correct book, and as a result, Custer is pre-judged. Now, Philbrick does not savage his main character as I’ve seen in other works (such as that Don’t Know Much About History guy), but neither does he step back into the 19th century to walk in his shoes. Sitting Bull gets probably more pages than he should, and though he’s not portrayed as an angelic being, he does come off better than the General. But Philbrick’s story does work if you can get past all that. I enjoyed a prior book of his, Why Read Moby Dick? and the man is good with a pen and a turn of a phrase. I graded the book a slight B-minus.

So if you’re interested in the topic of the Last Stand, I suggest reading both for a balanced view and a view that gets fully fleshed out. Donovan is the skeleton, Philbrick is the tissue. But I’d read them in that order.