p_t_b 's review for:

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick

4.0

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Five stars seems excessive but this was so fast and weirdly fun -- weird in the sense of this is a book about the collapse of native american life and also about a bunch of government employees getting dead. The only other Philbrick book I've read was In the Heart of the Sea, which was equally enjoyable although not quite as steadily good. He knows how to create 3d characters from letters/contemporary accounts; it helps that there were a bunch of loons with weird axes to grind in and around the 7th Cavalry (cf. the guy who includes anatomically precise drawings of his genitals in tender late-19th century letters to his wife). I would have liked to spend more time with Sitting Bull, but I'm guessing there's a deficit of source material for reconstructing the daily psychology of the Lakota circa 1875. Makes good use of Slotkin's Fatal Environment and Elliott's Custerology! Humanizes the gringo service employees who were just doing their (ill-conceived) job! Could have done a bit more with the inherent racism/evil of the American mindset! I was gonna say, the 19th century American mindset but then I remembered we're still racist and evil! Find out what happened to Custer's penis!

Also, v solid steamboat foamer material in here