Kindle Price: $13.99

Save $3.01 (18%)

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Audiobook Price: $22.57

Save: $15.08 (67%)

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

Buy for others

Give as a gift or purchase for a team or group.
Learn more

Buying and sending eBooks to others

  1. Select quantity
  2. Buy and send eBooks
  3. Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.

Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.

Follow the author

Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Little Big Man: A Novel Kindle Edition

4.6 out of 5 stars 1,749

“The truth is always made up of little particulars which sound ridiculous when repeated.” So says Jack Crabb, the 111-year-old narrator of Thomas Berger’s 1964 masterpiece of American fiction, Little Big Man. Berger claimed the Western as serious literature with this savage and epic account of one man’s extraordinary double life.

After surviving the massacre of his pioneer family, ten-year-old Jack is adopted by an Indian chief who nicknames him Little Big Man. As a Cheyenne, he feasts on dog, loves four wives, and sees his people butchered by horse soldiers commanded by General George Armstrong Custer. Later, living as a white man once more, he hunts the buffalo to near-extinction, tangles with Wyatt Earp, cheats Wild Bill Hickok, and fights in the Battle of Little Bighorn alongside Custer himself—a man he’d sworn to kill. Hailed by
The Nation as “a seminal event,” Little Big Man is a singular literary achievement that, like its hero, only gets better with age.

Praise for Little Big Man
 
“An epic such as Mark Twain might have given us.”
—Henry Miller
 
“The very best novel ever about the American West.”
The New York Times Book Review
 
“Spellbinding . . . [Crabb] surely must be one of the most delightfully absurd fictional fossils ever unearthed.”
Time
 
“Superb . . . Berger’s success in capturing the points of view and emotional atmosphere of a vanished era is uncanny. His skill in characterization, his narrative power and his somewhat cynical humor are all outstanding.”
The New York Times
All 2 for you in this series See full series
See included books
Total Price: $30.06
By clicking on above button, you agree to the Kindle Store Terms of Use

More like Little Big Man: A Novel
Loading...

Editorial Reviews

Review

“An epic such as Mark Twain might have given us.”—Henry Miller

“The very best novel ever about the American West.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Spellbinding . . . [Crabb] surely must be one of the most delightfully absurd fictional fossils ever unearthed.”
—Time

“Superb . . . Berger’s success in capturing the points of view and emotional atmosphere of a vanished era is uncanny. His skill in characterization, his narrative power and his somewhat cynical humor are all outstanding.”
—The New York Times

About the Author

Thomas Berger, whom the Times Literary Supplement has called “one of the century’s most important writers,” is the author of twenty-three novels. Little Big Man has been published in more than fifty editions throughout the world.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004P8JPVS
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The Dial Press; Anniversary edition (April 27, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 27, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1741 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 482 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0385298293
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 1,749

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Thomas Berger
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Thomas Berger (1924–2014) was the bestselling author of novels, short stories, and plays, including the Old West classic Little Big Man (1964) and the Pulitzer Prize–nominated novel The Feud (1983). Berger was born in Cincinnati and served with a medical unit in World War II, an experience that provided the inspiration for his first novel, Crazy in Berlin (1958). Berger found widespread success with his third novel, Little Big Man, and has maintained a steady output of critically acclaimed work since then. Several of his novels have been adapted into film, including a celebrated version of Little Big Man. His short fiction has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, and Playboy.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
1,749 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2013
During a recent outing with friends the subject of Westerns came up. We started rattling off some memorable films, and then I suggested 'Little Big Man' the  film  is one of my very favorites. Then one of my friends did me a huge favor. He said, "If you liked the movie, you'll love the book." I did know the film was based on Thomas Berger's novel, but frankly, it had never occurred to me to read the actual book. I just finished LITTLE BIG MAN, and it was an exceptional read. This sweeping epic about the pioneer adventures of 111-year-old Jack Crabb--who claims to be the lone white survivor of Little Bighorn--is witty, insightful, poignant, compelling, thrilling, and inspiring. Critics have claimed Berger may have written the finest contemporary novel of the American West; you'll get no disagreement from me. Berger definitely did his research when it comes to everything from Indian culture to firearms to the details of both the Washita and Little Bighorn Battles; and the prose, told in Crabb's no-nonsense, direct style, is thoroughly entertaining.

Most of us are familiar with the story. As a boy Jack is taken captive by the Cheyennes and becomes the adopted son of Old Lodge Skins, the chief. He becomes immersed in the Cheyenne culture, and by killing a Crow warrior about to kill another Cheyenne boy, he becomes Little Big Man the Legend. As a teen he goes back to the white culture following his band of warriors getting into a skirmish with soldiers; during succeeding years Jack moves back and forth between the two cultures, never feeling a sense of belonging in either. He wears many hats during this period, from mule skinner to teamster to buffalo hunter to gambler; and during his journey he rubs elbows with some colorful characters, including Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, and General George Armstrong Custer. And he survives two massacres: Washita and Little Bighorn, the former a rout by Custer's troops; the latter a massacre by thousands of Lakota and Cheyenne braves. He begins a family in both cultures, only to lose both. Yet still Jack is confounded by who he really is, and where he belongs. At the age of 111, he decides to reveal his claim to have survived Little Bighorn because he's too old to care if anyone believes him or not.

This is one grand tale that will have you steadily turning page after page. If you enjoyed the film, the book is must-read material. (The film has few deviations.) With the exception of McMurtry I haven't wandered very far into the Western genre; with a masterpiece the likes of LITTLE BIG MAN, I might have to sample this genre quite a bit more.
--D. Mikels, Esq.
52 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2024
Just read it and experience it for yourself. As noted by Larry MacMurtry, he could have written it but was robbed of the opportunity by Berger. Perhaps the greatest western novel ever written, bar none.
3 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2015
The Wild West is something of an obsessive hobby for effete, psychologically wobbly "man of letters" Ralph Fielding Snell. Despite the disapproval of his father, Snell has the money and leisure "to pursue my literary and historical interests with relative indifference to, and immunity from, the workaday world, for which, notwithstanding, I have the greatest respect."

Snell serves as a somewhat cracked conduit for the swear-it's-true life story of frontiersman Jack Crabb. Snell encounters Jack in an old folks home, for which Jack certainly qualifies: He claims to be 111 years old and recounts several of those years to Snell before reaching "the end of his trail."

Jack's recollections begin in the 1850s when he is separated from his family of would-be Mormons at the age of 10. A meeting for friendly drinks on the prairie with a band of Cheyenne goes horribly wrong. Neither whites nor Indians prove capable of holding their spirits. In fact, by the end of the party, the white men's spirits have taken flight from the corporeal world altogether, leaving physical bodies skewered and cleft.

The women decide to turn back to the protection of Fort Laramie, but Jack's mannish, whip-wielding sister, Caroline, announces that she and Jack will take up with the Cheyenne, surprising the Indians as much as her little brother. "It's useless to speculate about what she thought she knew or what she imagined, because they was always all mixed together."

When Caroline realizes a life of exotic romance is not in store (in fact, the Indians are shocked to discover she's female), she steals a pony and sneaks off, leaving Jack with the tribe. "My own position turned out to be orphan attached to the chief's lodge, which gave me the right to benevolent consideration from the whole family just as if I was related to them by blood. ... The women were obliged to give me clothes and food, and the men to see I grew up into a man." The Cheyenne, led by Old Lodge Skins, teach Jack "the way of the Human Beings."

Jack, though still a boy and small in stature, comes off pretty manly during a horse-thieving skirmish against a rival band of Crow, so Old Lodge Skins renames Jack "Little Big Man."

Despite frequent fatalities, war among the tribes is a relatively good-natured activity, but it's becoming clear that something's going to have to be done about those pesky white people. "The Army didn't fight by the rules and no doubt would not have if they knew them." A grand war council is convened, and plans are made to "rub them out." Jack has little problem with the concept in theory, but when confronted by a saber-waving cavalry charge barreling straight for him, "one big mowing machine with many hundred bright blades that chopped into dust all life before it and spewed it out behind," he can't scrub the warpaint off his face fast enough.

So begins Jack's reversion to white man status. He's adopted by the Rev. Silas Pendrake and subjected to the civilizing influence of church, school, female duplicity, sexual hangups and pneumonia. "I believed my blood was getting watery from the lack of raw buffalo liver. The only thing I learned so far that seemed to take real root was lustful yearnings, and the Reverend told me they was wrong."

Jack finds that his years living among Human Beings have made him ill-equipped for city life. He runs away to the grubby gold-prospecting encampment that's growing into what will become Denver. He's more comfortable among the mule skinners trading there, but when they're set upon by his former brethren of the Cheyenne, he's quick to assert his affinity for the Indians. Although Old Lodge Skins welcomes him back, Jack has become too familiar with white man's progress to believe the Cheyenne way will last. The whites have dug in, and they're not going anyplace. "I never heard of a natural force that would tear cellar walls from the earth." He advises his foster family to head north and stay away from the whites.

Jack won't be going with them. "I had been doing right well in Denver. I had got onto the idea of ambition. You can't make anything of yourself in the white world unless you grasp that concept. But there isn't even a way to express the idea in Cheyenne."

After the Civil War, the U.S. government is able to devote its undivided attention to eradicating the Indians. In turn, the Cheyenne hook up with the Sioux and Arapaho to terrorize white settlements. In the tit-for-tat hostilities, Jack loses a white wife and child and gains an Indian replacement set.

Ralph Fielding Snell observes that "Jack Crabb seemed to specialize in the art or craft of coincidence." Jack is always perfectly positioned in front-row seats for the major events in Western history, personally interacting with the major players. He works the Colorado gold rush, witnesses the cross-country extension of the Union Pacific, takes part in the extinction of the buffalo. He meets Wild Bill Hickock, Wyatt Earp and the luciferian-nicknamed Son of the Morning Star, George Armstrong Custer. The arrogant cavalry general provides a white counterpoint to Old Lodge Skins as the father figure who has the biggest impact on Jack.

Jack is a man perpetually straddling a spiritual border: Among whites, he feels Indian; among Indians, he sees himself as "white to the core." And generally, he has the bad timing to be on whichever side is losing at the moment.

All this vacillation between societies might make Jack appear unsympathetic as a character, a man without strong loyalties. As soon as his life is threatened, he switches persona, abandoning friends, family and lovers. It's a device by which author Thomas Berger can show both sides of the conflict. Jack encounters very few clear-cut good guys or bad guys in the white population centers. The Indians are neither the nobles of James Fenimore Cooper's novels nor the savages of George Armstrong Custer's prejudices. All of them are part of the same cast of fools myopically clawing for meatier parts in the epic tragicomedy of Western expansion. The Cheyenne refer to themselves as Human Beings to assert their superiority over others, but their actions throughout the book are just as likely to live down as live up to that term. Even Custer, the closest thing the book has to a villain, is portrayed as more of a preening fool and an egotistical loon.

Lest the historians complain, Berger makes it clear that Jack Crabb is quite likely full of beans (and keep in mind the additional filter of Ralph Fielding Snell). Jack is spinning a yarn in which the facts don't stand a chance against the truth. "Little Big Man" is what would generally be referred to as a "revisionist" western, though that can be a term by which critics reveal their ignorance of the genre, and it tends to belittle and downplay the mature groundwork laid by practitioners of that genre before the serious literary types came along to play. Revisionist westerns seldom revise as much as they think they do, but the best of them reside comfortably alongside the classics. OF the genre, not outside it or above it or, worst of all, transcending it.

"Little Big Man" is a damn fine western. It's also a damn fine piece of literature if you're one of those insecure Yankee types.
16 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2018
This is one of my all time favorite books. I've read it a half a zillion times, and I keep it handy for partial perusals. I first read it when I was in college, and I found it extremely imaginative, full of adventure, and of course a great piece of historical fiction. I was surprised to learn that Thomas Berger never visited the Little Big Horn Battlefield. I came across a book titled, "I Rode With Custer" written by a German immigrant who was actually at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He was part of Captain Benteen's command and ended up surrounded by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, helping to defend Major Reno and his men, about 3 miles from the Custer Battlefield. Much of his story connects to Jack Crabb's account, and I wonder if Thomas Berger relied on this man's experiences. The novel is a novel story. The sequel, "Return of Little Big Man", is a good story too. It picks up where this story leaves off and takes us all the way the the World's Fair in Chicago. Little Big Man is a great story as a book, and surprisingly, as a movie too, although of course the movie leaves out a lot of stuff and it gets off course from historical accuracy. It's good acting and directing. The book is always better. I suggest seeing the movie first, to get the characters and places set in your mind. That'll make reading the book even better. I visited the Little Big Horn Battlefield a few years ago. Something I'd wanted to do since reading this book. Seeing it and all of the spots where the battle started, ran its course and ended is well worth seeing to get real feel for how it played out.
7 people found this helpful
Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Better than the film
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 13, 2023
Love the movie but this really bring that period in time to life
Raffaello
5.0 out of 5 stars Great western with white and indian perspective
Reviewed in Germany on August 6, 2022
Lovely book
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Loved the MOVIE! Wanted to read the BOOK!
Reviewed in Canada on December 19, 2019
After some significant delay in receiving this item, I finally got it and was most pleased. Bravo to the AMAZON team who assisted me, even when I incurred some relevant long-distance phone charges in the process.
Ravetto
5.0 out of 5 stars Mémoires d'un visage pâle
Reviewed in France on March 13, 2013
On se souvient du film d'Arthur Penn, truculent, drôle, captivant.
Ce roman, duquel le film est tiré, est encore meilleur.
Un vrai plaisir
Colleen W.
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, great service
Reviewed in Canada on June 17, 2020
Luv this book, came in on time exactly as described.
Report an issue

Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?