Rating: 
Summary: Cookie Cutter
Review: Jack Crabb returns from the dead a more boring person than when he left us last, lo these many years ago.Instead of an intriguing, humorous historical novel of the post-Little-Big-Horn West wehave a formulaic series of anecdotes about the big names such as Wild Bill, Wyatt Erp and Buffalo Bill. Predictably, all of the success of these characters is due to Jack Crabb's intervention and after several hundred pages, enough is enough. Very little new information can be found and the settings requires a suspension of disbelief that becomes unwilling after a few days. In a world full of books, this oneisn't particularly bad but there are so many good ones you won't otherwise get to if you start this one that I advise you not to do so.
Rating: 
Summary: This was a welcome, funny sequel, more upbeat than expected.
Review: Jack Crabb, did not, after all, die miserably in an old folks' home after describing the death of his father-figure, Old Lodge Skins, to a sissy interviewer. Crabb lived on to relate the story of the next fifteen or so years of his life. He had a lot still to get off his chest--or Berger did. He continues musing over the gulf of misunderstanding apparently inevitable whenever race meets race or man meets woman. But in addition, we get the chance to hear him out on other topics--Catholicism, the French, women's rights and Queen Victoria, to name a few. I was afraid this book would be a downhill ride, both because I enjoyed LITTLE BIG MAN so much, and because the fate of the Indians involved was a foregone, depressing conclusion. There are sad bits, notably the murder of Sitting Bull and his son. However, this book surprised me, and I turned heads in public a few times by laughing out loud while reading it. Berger leaves Crabb in as happy a state as one can imagine him. This relieved me of a years-old sadness for the old codger, for I liked him a lot, and like him more now.
Rating:
Summary: A sequel worth waiting for!
Review: Jack Crabb. Just call him the "Forest Gump" of the Old West. Who else, but Jack Crabb, can say that they have met Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, Kate Elder, Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp, Henry Ford, Annie Oakley, and Queen Victoria? Who else, but Jack Crabb, can say that they have traveled to New Orleans, Chicago, New York, London, and Paris as a part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show? Who else, but Jack Crabb, can say that they witnessed the shootout at the O.K. Corral and the deaths of Wild Bill Hickock and Sitting Bull? Jack Crabb is alive and well in Thomas Berger's sequel to Little Big Man. The only white man to survive Little Big Horn picks up his story where the last book left off . . . and what a story it is! An excellent book! My only question is why did Berger wait so long to write a sequel? Let's hope the third installment of Little Big Man comes much sooner!
Rating: 
Summary: Captures the aura of the times very well
Review: My favorite historical fiction novel of the last year or two is The Triumph and the Glory, but Berger's fine book is a close second. The appeal of this genre is the transportation of the reader to other times and places with style and compelling realism, and Berger accomplishes this task 100 percent. Great reading, well-developed characters, a solid four star book.
Rating:
Summary: Berger Rides Again
Review: Return of Little Big Man is not as good as Little Big Man, but since Little Big Man easily ranks among the ten greatest American novels ever written, that is not strong criticism. RLBM is a bit too long - it drags somewhat between the point at which Jack Crabb joins Buffalo Bill and the point at which he witnesses Sitting Bull's death. But otherwise it is superior in every way. There is a change of focus here. Unlike LBM, RLBM is less a revisionist history of the Old West and has changed its focus to the encroaching Twentieth Century. Best of all, it introduces a romantic element in the form of Amanda Teasdale, who will surely prove a match for Jack Crabb. The author promises additional installments of Crabb's life. I look forward to them. I wish he'd produce a nonfiction companion volume (or footnotes a la Flashman) so the reader could determine what is fact and what is fancy.
Rating:
Summary: Little Big Man Returns-well worth the wait!
Review: The only thing that Return lacks from the original is the cast of fictional characters that make that story so rich,i.e. Old Lodge Skins, Younger Bear. Berger's writing style, and his knowledge of history, once again creates the aura of authenticity that makes the character Jack Crabb seem beleivable. At the end or Return, Jack's allusions to Roosevelt and the Roughriders in Cuba leaves me hoping for a further continuation of this remarkable story.
Rating:
Summary: A worthy sequel
Review: This sequel was well worth the wait. Although I found the later chapters to move slow at times this is Berger at his best. The chapters dealing with Tombstone are as charming and witty as the material in the original story. An enjoyable read!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but not Berger's best, and requires brainpower
Review: Thomas Berger is versatile and brilliant. He has written many wonderful books, starting with "Arthur Rex," one of the Arthurian cycle books to be recommended to those who love that. "Robert Crews" was a take-off of "Robinson Crusoe" and of course, "Little Big Man" was one of his all-time greats. This book is written for VERY INTELLIGENT PEOPLE. If you do not have a great grasp of history, you are not going to be able to truly appreciate the book. On the other hand, for those who do know a lot about world events during the period this book covers, there are delightful nuggets to be found everywhere. For example, near the end of the book, at the Chicago World's Fair, our protagonist meets a guy who says he will be the one who builds a "horseless carriage," but then says something which is disturbing to Jack Crabb, about his "worry that his work on the horseless carriage might be stole by an international conspiracy...trying to take over the world." You have to be aware of a lot to GET a lot of this book. One more thing: this book made me want to read "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." What that means, only those who read the book will know. It's good, it's good, but 3 stars is fine, because there are SO many other truly GREAT books out there. Keep reading!
Rating:
Summary: Readers should be eager to read this sequel.
Review: Thomas Berger's LITTLE BIG MAN (1964) was one of the great American novels of the 1960s--indeed, it's probably one of the great American novels of the twentieth century. It is the putative memoirs of Jack Crabb, who--many years later--would have us believe that he, traveling west in a covered wagon with his family, survived an attack by the Cheyenne, was adopted into their tribe, returned to "civilization," and survived both a gunfight with Wild Bill Hickok and the Battle of the Little Bighorn--and all sorts of other wackiness in between. The novel is funny, wise, sad, surreal, and wonderful. Readers who know the story only through the inadequate and incomplete film with young Dustin Hoffman should scurry to the local library and check out LBM (before the rush that publication of a sequel will surely engender)--or order a copy online
Rating:
Summary: A belated fanale for matched pair
Review: Those who read and re-read Little Big Man every decade or so over 40 years were probably as delighted as I was when Return of Little Big Man appeared in 1999. Jack Crabbe, the geriatric home resident of the original novel who'd told of his experiences in the West, always peripheral to the events we all know of, returns in this sequel to tell of his life after the Little Big Horn fight.
As the only white survivor of Little Big Horn, Jack wanders broke and almost naked into Deadwood, SD, to encounter his old acquaintance from Dodge, City, KS, Wild Bill Hickock, in time to be present for the Aces and Eights scenario. Naturally, Crabbe gives the eye-witness account of the even a bit differently than you've heard before.
Thereafter, Crabbe wanders back to Dodge, Tombstone, elsewhere, in time to be present for the OK Corral fight, offering up another side of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, the Clantons and Bat Masterson. Then eastward to the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, Queen Victoria, Bertie, Sitting Bull and Elizabeth Custer.
As a grand finale he manages to be with Sitting Bull for the assassination of the great chief of the Souix.
A great follow-up book to Little Big Man. Too bad it took so many decades to appear.
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