Customer Reviews

1876 Facts About Custer And The Battle Of The Little Big Horn

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This book is a disappointment in that it has three very serious flaws: 1. Aprroximately 200 of the 1876 facts in this book are nothing more than a listing of the birthplaces of members of the 7th Cavalry, or aliases they enlisted under. Now who cares! 2. Not more than one in thirty of the 1876 facts are referenced! If you want to check out a specific fact in this book by checking the source, you will have no idea what reference in the bibliography Mr. Russell got the fact from! 3. It has no index, which is always a huge handicap for any non-fiction book. This leaves the question "What audience is this book intended for?" It has too many details for LBH beginners, and cannot serve as a reference for the serious LBH student.

I picked this book up recently because I like the Indian Wars and saw "Savas" on the spine. I have every one of their books, and all of them are of high quality and wonderful. I also have the Titanic and Alamo books in this series, which are both great. Man, is this one a lot different than all the others. The organization is just awful. The "facts" are set out one after another: "Fact #766," and then "Fact #767" and so on. What a nutty idea. It makes the entire book mechanical and pedantic.

The writing is also ploddy and unexciting. Really, REALLY dry. Many entires read as if they were just keyed in--and are lifted almost verbatim from other books. Without an index, no footnotes, and about 75% of the entries worthless tidbits of information, why was this book published? I guess every good publishing company lays an egg now and again.

Some of the 'facts' mentioned tend to dispute one another and seems that the author just wandered from book to book without looking up any real information. Considering that the last ten years yielded a wealth of information that the author ignored especially about the type of weapons carried by the seventh cavalry. Shame on you Mr. Russell for this sham.

What could be better for Custer's last stand buffs than this exhaustive list of trivia. Many of the entries are very interesting. Some just say that John Doe was a member of Co A, with a small amount of personal data. It is a good book to skip around in and makes a perfect gift for the Custer fan in your life. You might call it Custer "Lite."