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Crazy Horse and Custer

Stephen E. Ambrose

Paperback | Pages: 560 pages

Rating: 4.15 | 6030 Users | 370 Reviews

Mention Books Supposing Crazy Horse and Custer

Original Title:	Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors
ISBN:	0743468643 (ISBN13: 9780743468640)
Edition Language:	English

Ilustration As Books Crazy Horse and Custer

Chief Crazy Horse gave native Americans one of its few moments of triumph in its struggle with the white settlers, who in the mid-19th century moved across the country, shot the buffalo, and built a railroad which would make the Western tide ever more inexorable. “Custer’s last stand” achieved mythic proportions, and it firmed up US resolve to finish the Indian problem once and for all. Within a few years, the reservation system was firmly in place.

I personally don’t usually like reading descriptions of battles. The question of which troop is approaching from the South, or which troop is separated from its base, make my eyes glaze over. These were not my favorite parts of this book, either, but they are necessary. And the chapters about politics (e.g., the broken treaty in the Black Hills) and about the people (e.g., Crazy Horse resisting confinement) – these were really good stuff.

Custer made several mistakes in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Notably, he failed to account for his troops’ fatigue. I was intrigued by the fact that he may have rushed the assault because he wanted a victory before the Democratic Convention in the summer of 1876. A victory could have given him the nomination, for this was a country which had often elected military heroes to its highest office.

Stephen Ambrose found much in common between Crazy Horse and Custer. They were both people of extraordinary energy and of special standing in their respective cultures. Ambrose finds much to admire in both. Crazy Horse, so successful in battle, was to die only a year later in tragic circumstances. Ambrose understood how profoundly sad was Crazy Horse’s ultimate capitulation.

It turns out that my knowledge of the Indian politics of the mid- and late-19th centuries was woefully thin, and I learned a lot from “Crazy Horse and Custer.”

Here are three of the concepts Ambrose taught me more firmly:

• The Sioux could not simultaneously be free and be effective soldiers. They chose to remain free. To have mounted a sustained campaign (which stood a very good chance of being successful), they would have had to delegate real authority and to organize themselves. They stuck stubbornly to their hunting life, even as some of their number began to want the things that white men offered to “agency” Indians, things such as coffee and sugar.

• Whites destroyed the good hunting essential to the Plains Indians. Grass was trampled by emigrant stock and the great buffalo herds were eliminated. The loss of food source was a powerful persuader to drive the Indians to ultimately give in to the white man.

• At one time there were serious U.S. peace policies and, certainly, members of Congress who wished not to fight the Indians. But peace efforts were seriously underfunded. Another misconception: the government did not understand that Indians did not want to be part of the great American melting pot.

Point About Books Crazy Horse and Custer

Title	:	Crazy Horse and Custer
Author	:	Stephen E. Ambrose
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 560 pages
Published	:	June 2nd 2003 by Pocket Books (first published 1975)
Categories	:	History. Nonfiction. Biography. North American Hi.... American History. Westerns

Rating About Books Crazy Horse and Custer

Ratings: 4.15 From 6030 Users | 370 Reviews

Rate About Books Crazy Horse and Custer

While an interesting perspective of the two biographies being joined and very readable, I find Ambrose a bit off putting. Besides being a bit too romantic, Custer and Crazy Horse, finally looking into each others eyes; Ambrose seems to arrogantly state things that cannot be disagreed with which are not at all certain. One example, Ambrose cites SLA Marshall's finding that in WWII no matter what the circumstances of battle on average only 15% of US troops engage the enemy, and Ambrose proceeds to

I low-rated this book for its careless use of such highly charged words as "savages" and "civilized" and such statements as this: "The United States did not follow a policy of genocide; it did try to find a just solution to the Indian problem."Whether from policy or from the unanticipated sum of myriad government-aided and -abetted acts of soldiers and settlers, the result was genocide. Nor was "a just solution to the Indian problem" ever a major concern of U.S. Indian policy. After all, the

After having traveled across South Dakota and visited Deadwood and the Black Hills in September, I'm obsessed with the West.

Wow. History has gotten so much better since I was in Junior High...Immensely readable, Ambrose has written a wonderful depiction of the times based on the conflict between two immense, American heroes. He paints a vivid picture of their up-bringing, formative years and early careers that eventually and inevitably led to their day at the Little Bighorn. This history is fair to both: elegant and moving. We come to know and perhaps love both protagonists, and the tragedy of Crazy Horse's death is

Custer and his immediate antecedents were consummate crackers. Jacksonian Democrats, American expansionists spoiling for a war, any war. Settled long enough and far enough East to entertain romantic, Fenimore Cooper-ish images of Noble Red Men, but made impatient by the independence of the tribes that still existed, on the land still to be taken by whites. Northerners, and loyal Unionists when the time for fighting came, though untroubled by slavery while it existed, and absolutely opposed to

So dry. So wordy. So soporific. (Don't forget, I was a history major. I've read A LOT of history.) As soon as I got to 51% I called myself finished. (It has been a couple of years since I invoked my personal 51%-and-I-can-call-it-read rule. )

Too much politics in first half of book.