Overview

""The best book yet written about Custer and the full significance of his career...Deserves a medal of honor for extraordinary service in the great cause of making history live.""--Chicago Tribune. ""There have been numerous books about this picturesque contradiction of a man, but the new biography, by Jay Monaghan, is undoubtedly the best.""--New York Times Book Review. ""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...""Not that Monaghan has written an argumentative book. Far from it. He has written a narrative, and what a narrative! With imagination as well as judgment, he tells the story with well-chosen details taken from reliable sources...All together, this is much the best of many Custer books. It brings the reader as close to the real man as any book is likely ever to do.""--New York Herald-Tribune Books.

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9780803257320

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"""Not that Monaghan has written an argumentative book. Far from it. He has written a narrative, and what a narrative! With imagination as well as judgment, he tells the story with well-chosen details taken from reliable sources. . . . All together, this is much the best of many Custer books. It brings the reader as close to the real man as any book is likely ever to do.""—New York Herald-Tribune Books"

Endless books have been written about George Armstrong Custer, boy general of the Union Army and golden-curled Indian fighter whose death on the Little Big Horn at the hands of the Sioux in 1876 turned him into a figure of controversy. In spite of its obvious, effort at fairness this last book, long and carefully documented, carries a flavor of bias, perhaps because the author presents much of the narrative from Custer's viewpoint. It does, however, give a full picture of a brilliant adolescent, dashing in battle, unduly severe in discipline, lacking in judgment, sympathy and a fondness for stark truth, and of his blindly adoring wife Libby, his little Durl who believed with him that he could do no wrong. Born in Ohio in 1839 of a large family, known as Armstrong or Autie, Custer graduated from West Point into the Civil War; gaining fame for reckless courage, a record aided by his own accounts, at 24 a Major General wearing curls and self-designed uniforms, he was sent West after the war to fight Indians; taking with him Libby, his own cook, staghounds and silk sheets, gaining more fame at the battle of the Washita, he was later courtmartialed and suspended for disobedience, cruelty, shooting deserters and leaving soldiers to be killed by Indians, although some of these charges may be questioned; sent in the 1870's to the Dakotas to fight the Sioux, he got into more trouble by unverified criticism of men in high places; on June 25, 1876, with yet more trouble before him, he led 250 soldiers and himself to death on the Little Big Horn, a battle without survivors and still hidden in mystery. Well annotated, the result of careful research but at times marred by a too-fictional viewpoint and too many unimportant details, this book should appeal to all writers and students of the West and to addicts of Western history and biography; admirers and detractors of Custer will criticize it, but it should find a place in public libraries and is a must for all Western historical collections. (Kirkus Reviews)

Not that Monaghan has written an argumentative book. Far from it. He has written a narrative, and what a narrative! With imagination as well as judgment, he tells the story with well-chosen details taken from reliable sources... All together, this is much the best of many Custer books. It brings the reader as close to the real man as any book is likely ever to do. -New York Herald-Tribune Books New York Herald-Tribune Books

Not that Monaghan has written an argumentative book. Far from it. He has written a narrative, and what a narrative! With imagination as well as judgment, he tells the story with well-chosen details taken from reliable sources. . . . All together, this is much the best of many Custer books. It brings the reader as close to the real man as any book is likely ever to do. -- New York Herald-Tribune Books

Not that Monaghan has written an argumentative book. Far from it. He has written a narrative, and what a narrative! With imagination as well as judgment, he tells the story with well-chosen details taken from reliable sources. . . . All together, this is much the best of many Custer books. It brings the reader as close to the real man as any book is likely ever to do. -New York Herald-Tribune Books

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