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Custer's trials : a life on the frontier of a new America

Stiles, T. J., author

Overview

Historian T.J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, demonstrating how much of Custer's legacy has been ignored. He refutes Custer's historical caricature, revealing a volatile, contradictory, intense person -- capable yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (he was court-martialed twice in six years). The key to understanding Custer, Stiles writes, is keeping in mind that he lived on a frontier in time. During Custer's lifetime, Americans saw their world remade. In the Civil War, the West, and many areas overlooked in previous biographies, Custer helped to create modern America, but he could never adapt to it. His admirers saw him as the embodiment of the nation's gallant youth, of all that they were losing; his detractors despised him for resisting a more complex and promising future. He freed countless slaves, yet rejected new civil rights laws. He proved his heroism, but missed the dark reality of war for so many others. Native Americans fascinated him, but he could not see them as fully human. Intimate, dramatic, and provocative, this biography captures the larger story of the changing nation in Custer's tumultuous marriage to his highly educated wife, Libbie; their complicated relationship with Eliza Brown, the forceful black woman who ran their household; as well as his battles and expeditions. It casts new light on a near-mythic American figure, a man both widely known and little understood.

• Publisher: Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC
• Subject: Custer, George A. 1839-1876. / United States. Army Biography. / United States. Army. / American Civil War (1861-1865). / Little Bighorn, Battle of the (Montana : 1876). / 1861-1876 / Generals United States Biography. / Little Bighorn, Battle of the, Mont., 1876. / Indians of North America Wars Great Plains. / Frontier and pioneer life Biography. / Frontier and pioneer life / Generals. / Indians of North America Wars. / United States History Civil War, 1861-1865. / Great Plains. / Montana. / United States.
• ISBN: 9780307475947

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Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
E467.1.C99 S76 2015	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE