Custer

This lavishly illustrated volume reassesses and celebrates the life and legacy of the WestâÈçs most legendary figure, George Armstrong Custer, from âÈêone of AmericaâÈçs great storytellersâÈë (The Wall Street Journal).On June 25, 1876, General George Armstrong Custer and his seventh cavalry attacked a large Lakota Cheyenne village on the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. He lost not only the battle but his life and the lives of his entire cavalry. âÈêCusterâÈçs Last StandâÈë was a spectacular defeat that shocked the country and grew into a legend that has reverberated in the national consciousness to this day. Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry has long been fascinated by the âÈêBoy GeneralâÈë and his rightful place in history. Here he delivers an expansive, clear-eyed reassessment of his life and legacy, revealing a complex, perpetually restless man with a difficult marriage, a hunger for glory, and an unwavering confidence in his abilities. While Custer is first and foremost an enthralling story filled with larger-than-life charactersâÈ'Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Buffalo Bill Cody, Sitting Bull, Crazy HorseâÈ'McMurtry also argues that Little Bighorn should be seen as a monumental event in American history, bringing to a close the great narrative of western expansion. Featuring more than 100 photographs, paintings, and illustrations, Custer is a visually stunning and magisterial portrait of one of the paramount figures of Western and American history, as told by the greatest chronicler of the American West.