"Few events in American history have generated as much commentary as the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn, and George Armstrong Custer has become one of those contested figures who have been mythologized to the point of caricature: glorified as a romantic figure of frontier individualism and reviled as a glory-seeking avatar of genocidal hatred. In more recent years Custer’s story has also been told with more detail and dispassion: in Jeffry Wert’s 1996 account of his military maneuvers (“Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer”), and in Evan S. Connell’s novelistic classic, “Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn” (1984).

It’s not clear why Nathaniel Philbrick decided that the world needed another book on Custer — perhaps he simply wanted to turn his storytelling talents, showcased in his 2006 book “Mayflower,” on the dramatic and symbol-laden battle of Little Bighorn. “The Last Stand” makes it clear that Mr. Philbrick has done a prodigious amount of research (his source notes are one of the outstanding features of this volume), and he’s woven it all into an evocative and cinematic narrative. Still, he’s turned up little that’s substantially new about Custer, and readable as his book is, it lacks the lasting visceral resonance of Mr. Connell’s masterpiece.

As he did in “Mayflower,” Mr. Philbrick has tried to spread around his sympathy for his subjects freely, sometimes performing contortions that come perilously close to rationalizations of Custer’s behavior. He cuts back and forth between the points of view of the Lakota, who saw their ancestral hunting grounds being stolen by the white men, and the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry, many of them poor immigrants who “had no other employment options.” He gives us a moving portrait of Custer’s main antagonist, the great Lakota chief and wise man Sitting Bull, who valiantly tried to protect his people’s future, as well as smaller, pointillist portraits of other Lakota and Cheyenne warriors and some of Custer’s soldiers."

Get the Story:
Last Stand? Yes. Last Word? Never. (The New York Times 6/4)
Excerpt: ‘The Last Stand’ (The New York Times 6/4)