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Post by biggordie on Jun 29, 2008 9:59:42 GMT -6
For those interested, A Terrible Glory is available on eBay at a greatly reduced price [I'm not sure that it has been remaindered just yet], but hurry - there were only 536 copies available a half hour ago. I didn't buy one.
Gordie
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Post by markland on Jun 29, 2008 12:04:54 GMT -6
After reading the elaborate and excellently written statements regarding Donovan's book (both pro and con) I will not add additional catalysis to the smoldering fire. However, I must make comment regarding Dark Clouds statement in which he admits his negativity towards written Custer books which applies to " virtually every Custer book these days." I find that statement startling at best and, somewhat incomprehensible. Let me explain why. During the immediate aftermath of this battle the truth of what actually occurred was severely augmented with false conclusions and, a myriad of other factors that has resulted in confusion that persists to this day. Beginning in 1984, due to a large fire on the battlefield, science through archeology entered the foray. As a result we have been able to confirm some truths and vanquish some un-truths resulting in establishing a substantially reasonable summation of what may have occurred. Having said this, why the animosity against every Custer book today. Are you inferring that books written in the past were better? Or, are you implying that all Custer books are unworthy? Personally, I am eternally grateful for the magnificent efforts of the vast majority of the authors of this genre (there are a few exceptions) for their hard work and dedication. Thanks to their efforts, I have received so much information that, otherwise, would not have been available. Lastly, where you excluding the works of Gray, Fox, and Hardoff from your list of unworthiness? Wiggs, what in the hell is a "catalysis"? A catastrophic analysis? The world awaits my presence, so adios for a few. The wife is nagging me to get up and moving to take the walking hairball factories to the vet's for their shots. Billy
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 30, 2008 9:15:35 GMT -6
Markland, read the book.........the booooooooooooooooooookkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.
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Post by Diane Merkel on Jul 1, 2008 0:42:24 GMT -6
A Brilliant Bonehead!
(I'll be dodging salmonella-infected tomatoes for that.)
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Post by markland on Jul 1, 2008 4:51:29 GMT -6
Markland, read the book.........the booooooooooooooooooookkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk. Too many other things to read first. I finished last night Ironclads and Columbiads by William R. Trotter and am getting ready to dive into another one of his trilogy about the Civil War in North Carolina. By the way, if anyone is interested, Ironclads and Columbiads is a very good book and Amazon has the right price now, $11.01. The thing is, they were on the bottom of my "read when I have time pile" and a receipt in I & C indicated that they were purchased in '96. It doesn't help that I purchased four books yesterday from Amazon about the Indian Wars on the frontier-Scout's book is on the Wish List but too expensive right now. So, Jim's book will have to wait. Anyway, I believe I have mentioned that the Custer-Cluster is not by sole and only interest in the West, nor even a major part. Anyway, from the same pile of books to be read, I picked up Greene's Yellowstone Command this weekend and am also reading that. Be good, Billy
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Post by conz on Jul 5, 2008 15:59:14 GMT -6
I just finished Donovan's book, and can easily say that it is my favorite on this battle ever written. It is a better overall, starter volume than any thing Grey, Utley, Fox, Stewart, Sklenar, et al have written, IMO.
It is not really a "model" book, with detailed time-lines and movements, like some...it stays more general than that, but does have an overall model he has pieced together from the best that is out there. I don't agree with all his conclusions, BTW, but it is well reasoned.
I'm one who likes his good prelude and epilog portions of the battle. As a "big picture" history a volume needs this, unlike the more tactical "model books."
Donovan may not have broken new ground with earth-shattering evidence, but I do think that he has the most sound interpretations of evidence done so far. Best of all, he usually explains the other views and why he adopts his judgments either in the text or in his excellent notes.
The most difficult think Donovan has done, I think, is to write a comprehensive history of LBH that is measured and sound, and is equally useful to the new student to LBH and the most experienced students of this battle.
How many authors can do that?
Clair
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 7, 2008 9:07:14 GMT -6
Again, another general tongue bath without any reference to specifics of the book. No mention of the weird errors. There is no epilogue.
As a writer, he's dead on the page. Stewart and Connell eat him alive, and it's no suprise that Connell's book, a quarter century in print, is the public's continued choice.
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Post by conz on Jul 7, 2008 10:53:42 GMT -6
dc,
Can't we find "weird errors" in every Custer book? Is one book impeccable in its editing and implications? I think not, but don't have time to survey them ALL. <BG>
I do lament that the rush to publish these days results in more silly errors than I've ever seen in a wide range of literary genres...fiction as well as non-fiction.
As for epilog, I think you'll find it there, under the second definition:
"epilog
noun 1. a short speech (often in verse) addressed directly to the audience by an actor at the end of a play [syn: epilogue] 2. a short passage added at the end of a literary work; "the epilogue told what eventually happened to the main characters"
Clair
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Post by Dark Cloud on Aug 24, 2008 13:36:21 GMT -6
Another example, this day, provided by the AAO forum and its resident and near sole poster.
On page 93, Custer is quoted as having regard for Reno. Then, the author says without any support that Custer's opinion went down over the years. That's the needed supposition to install for Custerphiles who need it to explain Keogh and Cooke attending to Reno's early advance. But there's no evidence whatsoever that Custer's opinion had really changed, although he was p.o'd over the loss of his command and Reno's attempt to secure it previous.
This is Ward Churchill at work. The image of scholarship, the vicious and unsupported statement, and the unwary walk away with the feeling that Custer having a highly negative opinion of Reno is a fact. It isn't, or at least Donovan doesn't support it.
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Post by elisabeth on Aug 25, 2008 3:21:36 GMT -6
What more evidence do we need than Custer denouncing Reno, not only in private letters but to the newspapers, the day before they set off on their final march? That, and removing him from any sort of command until the divide halt on the 25th.
I'm currently reading Centennial Campaign by your favourite John Gray. Kind of surprised to find how often he's spattering his narrative with adverbs and adjectives unsupported by evidence, comments (even some with exclamation marks), and other forms of the author intrusion you so abhor. Do we rank him as a Ward Churchill, too?
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Post by Dark Cloud on Aug 25, 2008 9:40:04 GMT -6
Because Custer doesn't write under the name Custer for the papers on his last campaign, but apparently poses as an objective journalist, one. We don't have 100% proof that it is Custer.
Two, I'm unaware of Custer saying anywhere that his opinion of Reno has declined over the years. I am aware that he bitches about Reno in the supposed last newspaper piece because he had taken the sort of bold chance, leavened with caution, that Custer might have taken in his place and in fact in a few days did, absent the caution. Custer feared Reno at that point, and makes rather a bigger deal out of it than facts support. Reno's scout was rather well done, and what he gathered demolished the assumptions of Terry.
In any case, Donovan doesn't list a source for his statement that Custer's opinion had declined over the years. I looked.
You're neither familiar with Ward Churchill nor the war for our western history currently in progress. Gray does not exhibit any characteristics of Churchill, and he admits to supposition. Gray was an amateur historian and he exhibits the pros and cons of that avocation. I've explained specifically my likes and dislikes of Gray for years on this forum alone, which is that the boring, wonky time lines changed the entire format of Custer discussion, and people HAVE to address them to be taken seriously. I disagree with his conclusions, many announced by his language choices, and do not hold the rather obvious errors of a dying man to heart in his more important last book. He tried to be fair and announced his limitations - and everyone's - in ability to suppose what happened. He's wrong, often enough, in my opinion and in his conclusions. Gray is currently the most important writer on the LBH, whether we like it or not. He is not the best writer, and he is not infallible, and these are opinions that have not changed since I first addressed them in 1993 in writing. So, since this is the 400th time I've explained this, do you finally grasp it?
Donovan implies he has the answers, states supposition as fact, and impresses idiots with reams of notes, which defines accuracy and objectivity to the plantlife. Quantity, not quality or relevance or actual accuracy or point. Just have lots of endnotes, difficult to reference at need. Churchillian. Gray does his notes in the text for ease of reference. For that alone.....
And Donovan is a pedestrian writer.
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Post by elisabeth on Aug 25, 2008 10:12:46 GMT -6
I'm not talking about his last book; dying or not, he does a lot less of this sort of thing in that one. It's only the character-assassination of Benteen (hardened up considerably from his fairly sympathetic stance in Centennial Campaign) and his verbal acrobatics to rehabilitate Curley that one can seriously object to there. CC, by contrast, is full of suppositions as to people's characters, thoughts and emotions stated as fact. Not saying it's not a most useful book; where he does stick to fact uncoloured by opinion, it's great stuff. Just that it's kind of odd to tear one writer to shreds for things another writer gets away with scot-free. Almost every other writer, in fact.
Do you really prefer footnotes to endnotes? I find them rather barbarous myself. Particularly as organised in any of Hardorff's books, where they go on for pages, until they're completely adrift from the point they're supposed to be referring to. Very uncomfortable reading.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Aug 25, 2008 17:19:02 GMT -6
That's an absolutely inaccurate summation of my opinion of Gray or Custer writers in general. What I've said about Connell alone sinks it.
Again, you attempt to deceive with the issue of end or footnotes. Gray does it very conveniently within the text, as I said, with source and page. The alternative is not, as you imply, the stupidity of pages long footnotes. That's what end notes are for, and there is nothing to prevent their use with Gray's method.
But then, you're discussing two different types of books. Donovan wants to write a linear tale like Connell with prejudicial notage that doesn't admit to contrary views, whereas Connell will just tell several variants and leave it to the reader. That's honest.
I've listed several areas of concern with Donovan, with page numbers, here, and nobody addresses them or defends them. That's mostly because they haven't actually read it since they know - like me and everyone - you really don't have to read books in Custerland to know what he'll say. But, unlike me, won't admit it. His first picture book involving Custer was a clear prediction of what followed.
Since you defend him, perhaps you can explain how Donovan dramatically has Kellogg penning his note to his editor on the 24th when it left on the 21st? Or was Connell and everyone wrong, and Kellogg's papers were aboard someone's mule? Just one of many details - like the meeting between Boston and Martin - that adds to the unwary reader a sense of detailed accuracy that rather withers in the light.
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Post by elisabeth on Aug 26, 2008 2:37:06 GMT -6
Everybody makes errors. Mike Donahue's Drawing Battles Lines, for instance, was barely off the presses before people were pointing out the many in that. His errors don't make his book worthless. On the other board, he assured everyone they'd be corrected in the second printing. No great drama. Same with this.
Since you regard Connell as honest, perhaps you can explain how he arrived at his characterisation of Keogh: "drunken, insolent, and abusive ... radiates a sense of electric violence ... aggressive, rude, alcoholic ..." and so on. It's a touchstone that reveals lazy research; he's simply taken the Fred Dustin version and embellished it with some lively writing ("Mephistophelian sexuality", heaven save us) of his own. Because so much of the book does appear judicious and fair, when he states this sort of thing as fact, no variants offered, the unwary reader guilelessly assumes it to be true. Result: a silly myth becomes accepted as genuine "history", and understanding is perverted. Sorry, but that's not honesty in my view.
Not "attempting to deceive" on the footnotes/endnotes thing, by the way; it was a genuine question, in the vain hope of an actual discussion. But hey ...
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Post by biggordie on Aug 26, 2008 9:31:03 GMT -6
All:
Just to intrude a thought about sources, footnotes and endnotes. I personally find them intrusive and time-wasting when used the way they are by most writers. I long ago adopted the Gray method of quoting the sources in the text, although it might not be fair to the late Doctor for me to call it the "Gray method" since I first used it in my first attempt at the Little Horn story in 1971, and I wouldn't want anyone to blame Gray for my musings and style, such as it is.
I always found reading with one eye on the text and a couple of fingers in the endnotes [and flipping back and forth] a huge waste of time. Sources are another bone of contention for me, since I rather doubt that many readers actually check the references. I have found many instances of either non-relevant, misquoted, or totally fabricated sources, only because I tend to use most books as sources for sources.
Elisabeth is right about Dutch Hardorff, who is one of my favorite sources for sources, since he apparently feels the need to footnote every other sentence - particularly when he is using Walter Camp materials. I've seen a couple of examples where the material covered all of three short sentences [Camp's notes are full of very short bits - "says never saw Bob Jackson" is a good example] and the footnotes took up three pages. Or seemed to - probably an exaggeration on my part. Sometimes it is difficult to find where you were before you set off on your quest through the notes.
Gordie
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