Custerology -- new book and excerpt

[dblobaum]

The University of Chicago Press has just released Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer Michael A. Elliott. The book is about the past and the present, weaving vivid historical accounts of Custer at Little Bighorn with contemporary commemorations that range from battle reenactments to the unfinished Crazy Horse memorial.

A substantial excerpt from the book is available on the publisher's website at: www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/201467.html

More about the book at: www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/203014.ctl

[crzhrs]

A excellent telling of the events leading to and the LBH.

Strange: You gotta read this!

[strange]

I'll look for it!
I love the photo on the cover too! Thats the physical specimen I've been talking about! I've even seen pictures where he's bigger than this. If any of you have the chance, I suggest looking at that picture next to a good one of Stallone and you'll see that they are of similar size. When Sly is off the roids (which he mostly took for Rambo) he's only 177 pounds but that is very large next to Hollywood actors that go way down in weight.

But that book looks good! So I'll check it out!

I need to catch up on some Indians right now. I'm really liking Gall, quite a big guy himself and very tough looking too! Gall rules!

Thanks, crzhrs!

[Diane Merkel]

Here's a review of the book by Larry McMurtry:

No sooner had I finished reviewing Michael Wallis's recent biography of Billy the Kid for this journal than what should come in the next day's mail but Michael Elliott's excellent new book Custerology, about that other hardy perennial of western legend, sometime General George Armstrong Custer, who with more than 250 men of the Seventh Cavalry, which he commanded, met his death in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, in southern Montana, on the afternoon of June 25, 1876.

Review: www.nybooks.com/articles/21057

[Dark Cloud]

Well written and a new slant. Still, it's difficult to be honest about those to whom you are in debt, one supposes, because his conclusions about re-enactors and his capitulation to the concept of 'living historian' as other than actor is pretty weak and, I think, totally wrong.

It is not a bland rewrite of past books, like Donovan's, with end notes tacked on, and anything original in concept if not totally accurate (his summation of the battle contains some clunkers) in result deserves praise, both for the rarity and for the kindnesses bestowed.