Customer Reviews

The Custer Reader

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am fairly baffled by the negative review below. This book is a great collection of materials -- both primary (19th c.) and secondary (20th c.) -- covering the whole of Custer's life. It's not a comprehensive argument, but a collection of reprints, but many of the things here are hard to find elsewhere. If you have an interest in Custer or the Indian Wars, this is a terrific resource, not only for learning the history but for understanding the mythologies that have come out of it. If there's a fault in the book it is that it could be revised with an expanded edition to include new material. How about it, Professor Hutton? A second edition? Please!

This book is unique in that it provides essays on the numerous facets of Custer's life not only by the participants that knew him but from Custer himself including notable historians that know Custer best. It also covers fascinating facts such as Custer's First Stand at Trevillian Station, a Civil War Battle where Custer was surrounded by Confederate Calavary. Hutton, himself a notable Western Historian, is one of a number of well written essays on the Custer Myth including a critical look at how movies and art portrayed Custer over the years representing the pathos of the nation at that time. The change of view from Erol Flynn's "They Died with Their Boots On" to Richard Mulligan's portrayal in "Little Bighorn" takes a well versed explanation. One of my favorite parts of the book is an essay by Hutton where he explains why in movie director John Ford's "Fort Apache" version of Custer's last stand, John Wayne's character Captain York praises the gallant loss of Colonel Thursday (Custer,) who he actually hated, because York "realized that society understands little of the true motivation of heroes but still needs to idealize them as figures to emulate". This is just not an interesting read but a reflection of how changes in society change perceptions of men and history. By the way, its a fun read!

I recommend this book for anyone that is interested in the life of General George Armstrong Custer. I found this book to be the most insightful reporting of his life before, during and after the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25,1876. As always anything written by two of the greatest western and Custer historians of all time, the articles by Mr. Utley and Mr. Hutton are excellent. Because of number of articles written by so many authors you get a different outlook on what Custer's life was like during and after the Civil War. I own and have read upwards of forty books and articles on Custer, having started when I was a youngster and I was greatly suprised to find this book later in my life. I don't know how it slipped by in my Custermania. If there was only one book I could say offered a little bit of everything in Custer's life this is it. People tend to forget what a great Civil War hero he was and dwell on his great defeat in Montana that fateful day.

A well researched piece of Custerology.
A fine addition to anyone who is interested in the life of Custer.
Mr. Utely, once again delivers on his scholarly social historical
skills to the historical literature of the American West.

Must us old Custer Buffs be subjected to a rehash of everything we read on the subject dating back to the 1930's and wonder why the same old ground is plowed over and over. I think I know. It makes reputations for PhD's who find it easy to send their graduate students to the library to assemble a (new?) book for them.

It reminds me of Victor Borga's famous act in which he excerpts scraps from the Blue Danube and Shubert's Serendae, plays them, sometimes backward, pastes the scores together, we are told a he goes along, and finally plays the result, which he calls Blue Serenade by Strubert. At least he made no bones about it. Happily it is nearly impossible to compose original music in a library, and unhappily it is easy to appear to compose an original book in a library.

I am waiting for the day that an "uppity" and enterprising graduate student notices that he can use the Library's computers to find relatives of Custer and those who were his associates and do a book about the survivors and what they may be able to find in the attic that hasn't yet been published.

They will have to look for a new "advisor" and perhaps a new school to get their Graduate Degree, but they may get famous in the process.