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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 921 CUSTER | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Profiles the life of Custer, including his military brilliance during the Civil War and his death at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Author Notes
Louise Barnett, professor of English at Rutgers University, in New Jersey, is the author of Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
When historic personages pass into legend, they lend themselves to reinterpretation by each subsequent generation. So it is with George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876), who here comes into the rigorous purview of Rutgers English professor Barnett (The Ignoble Savage) as she applies the structures of class, race and gender to depict an erratic, complex man who never adjusted to the end of his triumphs in leading patriotic volunteers in the Civil War. Barnett finds that Custer despised the men of his Seventh Cavalry, who fell with him at Little Bighorn, as mercenaries and societal dregs; that he embraced his country's racist policies toward the Plains Indians; that he owed any emotional stability he possessed to a co-dependent relationship with his wife, Libbie. But Barnett is no mere debunker. Her analysis of the Custers' marriage and the workings of the frontier army is solid. Her common-sense approach to the Little Bighorn cuts like Occam's razor through pages of elaborate reconstructions. She wisely attributes Custer's defeat not to esoterica such as disloyal officers and jammed carbines but to poor planning and reconnaissance in the face of the largest gathering ever of Plains Indians. While Robert Utley's Cavalier in Buckskin remains the richest Custer biography, Barnett makes a solid contribution to our understanding of the man and the myth. Photos not seen by PW. Rights, except first serial, electronic, audio: Gerard McCauley. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In this far-reaching, perceptive study of the tragic hero of the Little Bighorn, Barnett (English/Rutgers Univ.) traces the events of the postCivil War decade leading up to the ``Last Stand'' and examines how Custer became firmly rooted in the American imagination. Barnett successfully navigates beyond the tired, opprobrious clichés apportioning blame and demanding answers for the deaths of 263 troopers of Custer's Seventh Calvary. She aims instead to present the historical, social, and mythic context that continues to lend disproportionate weight to a relatively unimportant battle. Like other historians and biographers before her, she recounts the multitude of reasons for the destruction of Custer's forces but avers that the ``mystery'' behind his defeat was engendered by the ``stubbornly rooted belief that whites could always outfight Indians . . . There had to be some aberration, some unknown circumstance, some flagrant departure from reason or plan to account for what was otherwise unimaginable, hence mysterious.'' Custer's phoenixlike career is ably detailed, set within the context of a fascinating, sometimes chilling portrait of the violent, gaudy frontier society of the period. Custer's prominence in the pantheon of American heroes has been largely due to Libbie Custer's ceaseless devotion to his memory for the entire 57-year span of her widowhood. Libbie memorialized her husband by writing three popular memoirs, delivering speeches, and overseeing the sculpting and dedication of statues in various parts of the country. The events at the Little Bighorn, Barnett demonstrates, swiftly passed into the realm of myth, where they remain, despite recently unearthed historical evidence that casts a much clearer light on what happened that day. Both Custer-phobes and Custer-philes would do well to study this work, but it may just as profitably be read as a major addition to the history of American culture. (For another life of Custer, see Jeffry D. Wert, Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer, p. 592.)
