Great concept- a history of the parallel lives of the two leaders of forces at the Battle of Little Bighorn, in which General Custer and his company were all killed by Crazy Horse's Sioux. We learn in alternating fashion about their childhoods and early adult exploits- Custer as an 1860s West Point grad and Civil War hero, and Crazy Horse as a rising leader of the Sioux leading battles against the Crow Indian tribes and the United States Army in the Indian Wars of the late 1860s and 1870s. The book culminates in the battle in 1876 and its aftermath (Crazy Horse was forced to surrender the next year, as White men essentially killed all the buffalo that was their food source and had them cornered).

The story doesn't speak well of the United States. First the Sioux are forced to sign away most of the Plains and stay in the Black Hills, and then when gold is found in the Black Hills, the US just abrogates the treaty and takes that too. Ugly.

I had a tough time with some things in the book- first of all, the maps are terrible- lightly drawn and confusing. For people like me who are unfamiliar with the geography of Montana and the mountain west, good maps would have really helped. And the book follows many Native American and White generals and leaders, which frankly gets quite confusing- the cast of characters is large. ( )

Military historian Ambrose examines the connections between the Indian chief and the cavalry officer. Typical Ambrose! Whatever your opinion about Custer, it won't change with this book. The text quantity seems to favor Custer, but there's not much written about Crazy Horse from that time, so most of Ambrose's statements are about typical Sioux life. Ambrose is particularly good about describing the intramural Indian conflict that likely put them where they are today....in addition to a technology gap,, .warring for glory and failure to follow leadership in a meaningful way. Custer's arrogance also comes out and at the academy, he epitomizes: "If the minimum weren't the minimum, it wouldn't be the minimum." Great gook comparing the two warriors and their cultures. ( )

Not much new in the Custer and Crazy Horse showdown. What I particularly like about Stephen Ambrose is his ability to give a sense of the contemporary time. In this particular case, Custer’s fame with the public based on his Civil War exploits, which ended up putting him back in charge of the Seventh Cavalry. Moving back and forth between events in their lives works out plot-wise for the inevitable conclusion.

One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors.

Although this book has been around for a long time, I had never read it until recently. Of course, anything written by Stephen Ambrose is top-notch, and this book is no exception. He uses the interesting approach of narrating the lives of these two leaders in parallel even though they never met until the end of Custer's life. Crazy Horse, of course, was also brutally killed within a year after Custer's death. ( )