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

The Resource Custer's trials : a life on the frontier of a new America
Label
Custer's trials : a life on the frontier of a new America
Title remainder
a life on the frontier of a new America
Statement of responsibility
T.J. Stiles
Creator
Author
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
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
Awards note
Pulitzer Prize for History, 2016
Biography type
individual biography
Cataloging source
DLC
Dewey number
  • 973.8/2092
  • B
Illustrations
  • illustrations
  • maps
  • plates
Index
index present
LC call number
E467.1.C99
LC item number
S76 2015
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography

Context

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

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