Book Review: Crazy Horse and Custer

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This is a riveting, story-like history book, the kind that Stephen E. Ambrose seems to write without effort, and with great passion.

His latest, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors is an excellent, well rounded book that takes a topic tender in American History, and presents both sides of the issue, allowing the reader to form their own viewpoint on the history of Native Americans of the northern Plains.

On one side, there is Custer: the ambitious, romantic, and magnetic soldier that in a way is the perfect picture a young, forward thinking America. On the other, there is the calm, powerful Crazy Horse, who embodies everything we love about the noble Plains Indians–fierce, humble, kind, and simply taking life in stride, but like a coiled spring, ready to defend intruders who would disrupt their way of life.

Mr. Ambrose takes these two, and does a wonderful job explaining how the influence their environment had on them. Custer comes from a progress driven, hard working society that is the individualistic personae working together for a common goal—but always working, always moving forward, learning from the past to apply it most vigorously to the future.

Crazy Horse comes from a society that had been around for generations, and is most content with their lot. They take what they need, and only what they need, living as a family of independents who are content to reflect on the past, and bring it to the present.

It is a gripping tale of blundering West Pointers, undisciplined Sioux war parties, and most of all, brave fighters, on both sides, pitted against one another in a bloody battle for the Plains.

I give this book FIVE STARS.

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Professor Mike

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