Customer Reviews

The Story of the Little Big Horn: Custer's Last Fight

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Classic account by Graham who appraises the LBH battle objectively in one sense but clearly seems to favor Reno's and Benteen's actions over Custer. The Reno Court of Inquiry testimony which Graham obtained in the 1920s in a limited release fueled much of the book.What was most interesting was a lengthy letter from a member of General Terry's staff officer who wrote the letter just after Terry's death. The letter is a defense of Terry who is characterized as a kind man who did not want to criticize Custer after death too harshly. The letter details how in the opinion of the staff officer, how Custer disobeyed orders particularly in the lack of use of scouts that were suppose to contact Colonel Gibbon's column prior to attacking. Fuels more fire in the controversy. The Custer Myth is the better of the two Graham books.

This is one of the classic books on the Little Big Horn fight. The author, W.A. Graham, was a retired Army lawyer who spent his retirement in the study of the 1876 Sioux Campaigns. Graham is almost unique within the tightly knit universe of Little Big Horn scholarship. His training and career as a lawyer made him attempt to be as objective as possible in his gathering and assessment of the evidence he presents. Graham indulges in little, if any, of the polemics and special pleading which seems to characterize much writing about Little Big Horn. For that reason alone, this volume is recommended highly. While somewhat dated by more recent scholarship (this is a reprint of the 1941 Second Edition) it is a "must have" in the library of anyone interested in this famous battle of the Plains Indian Wars.

This book is well written and very detailed, as i read one chapter i had to read another!