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Summary: kaleidescope of the american past
Review: Evan Connell has produced a first-rate overview of one of the most controversial figures of American history, Custer. The book contains a vast array of shifting views, combining innumerable streams of oral history, historiography, and just plain great storytelling in his personal voice. The portrait that emerges is a masterpiece of ambiguity and determined investigation, which reflects the complexity of the American past better than any other history book I know on the subject. While it may appear rambling and difficult to follow the threads, in my view it is because there are too many threads in this American life.Absolutely brilliant, brutal and sad. For any American wishing to know who we are, it is a must read. It shatters and embraces our myths at one go.
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Summary: Jumbled, Yet Fascinating Look At Custer and the Indian Wars
Review: Evan Connell has written a powerful book. It is a balanced presentation of George Armstrong Custer, the post-Civil War Indian Wars, Plains Indians and the myth of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Facts abound. I started this book thinking it would primarily focus on Gen. Custer and the fight. While those topics are the framework of the book, Connell spends quite a bit of time exploring various indian chiefs, indian practices, previous conflicts and the conditions that produced one of our country's most celebrated battles. First person quotes are abundent and the author usually produces two or more sides to every episode. These explorations underscore how difficult getting at a true history is, particulary when pride and ego rest on a particular telling of an event. He has done very good research. This is a brutal book. American and indian savagry are laid bare. Warfare and existence on the frontier were not pretty. The "rules" of war were abandoned by both sides with regard to the taking of prisoners or the frequent butchering of women and children along with those unlucky enough to be in the path of maurading soldiers or indian bands. Connell's book leaves no doubt that American notions of racial superiority, mainfest destiny and economics created the situation in which the indians would fight in the extreme to protect their lands from white encroachment. However, the author also underscores that most of the indian tribes were brutal and ruthless when attacking other tribes, lone indians and in their own rituals and customs. Had America respected it's indian treaties, it can be argued that the indian lands still would have had atrocities visited upon them as various tribes concentrated their full time attentions on settling the wrongs each felt had been metted out by other red men. His refusal to treat the indian as a politically correct manifestation of mother nature is refreshing and allows for a very balanced telling of the story. The author has a unique writing style. He doesn't come to a fork in the road without taking it. These side tracks and tangents allow him to explore in full the charactors and milieu attendent to The Last Stand. However, they are presented in no particular order or chronology. The author paints a strong impression rather than presenting an ordered and structured telling of a compelling tale. This incohesion is so pronounced that the end of a chapter has no meaning other than to allow one to catch one's breath before plunging into the next twenty pages of free associations. My opinion of this book changed several times during my reading. In the beginning, I found it hard to get into because of it's meandering style. But the vignettes, characters, facts and writing are all compelling. His style will require some adjustment to the frequent reader of history. But, by the end the reader will know that they have immersed themselvs in a darn good story that fascinates.
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Summary: And now the rest of the story
Review: Evan Connell's Son of the Morning Star is a masterful book that defies catagorization. It isn't quite history but it isn't fiction either. Connell has taken a mountain of historical detail, including quotations from letters, transcripts, newspapers and interviews, and arranged them in a kind of narrative montage that gives us the story of Custer at the Little Bighorn in a more complete way than we have ever experienced it before. His book begins a couple of days after the battle - when Custer's absence is still unexplained - with the discovery of the remains of Custer's troop. The realization of what they are seeing comes slowly to the soldiers that find the bodies, just as the big picture of what happened comes slowly to the reader - detail by detail. The book is full of wonderful digressions, told in the same way as the main story. These provide background information on all the major participants (Indian as well as cavalry officers) and many minor characters as well, and the story of their lives following the massacre and the inevitable search for a scapegoat. This is a unique and beautiful book. Connell seems to have lived with the research for this book for a long time because he has internalized it beautifully and knows just what quotes and anecdotes to juxtapose in order to create the picture he wants. I can't remember ever reading anything quite like this and certainly seldom have a book match it for emotional impact. I would highly recommend this book to anyone.
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Summary: .
Review: Evan S Connell might be the best writer ever to attempt a book on the American west.
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Summary: Splendid
Review: Forget all the other books on the subject, this one is the best. It isn't just about Custer, it's about nearly everyone in this surreal true story. All the events seem like the Twilight Zone and that's no joke. It is a very long story but well worth it. I tell my friends about some incident in this book and they are truly amazed. A few parts I particularly liked were the parts about Harrington; the actual morning star rising before Custer attacked a village (before Bighorn); the reflection in the clouds when they were marching off to their death; and the famous scaled guy who rose up among the dead bodies when the boat reached Denver. Chilling, but true. Even for those who hate histroy, this book packs a wallop.
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Summary: rambling or breathtaking?
Review: I am increasingly convinced that a book like this brings out a basic personality difference in readers. I loved it, especially its many detours into topics that may be only tangentially related to Custer (like the scalping techniques of different tribes) but which I found endlessly fascinating. On the other hand, some friends to whom I breathlessly told them you "must read this!" found Connell's side trips too distracting. I have found similar reactions to Hughes' Fatal Shore about the founding of Australia (another book that I loved but others have found meandering). Neither reaction is 'right' or 'wrong' but worth keeping in mind as you decide whether to buy this book. If you are willing to put yourself in Connell's hands and want to learn all sorts of lessons about the Wild West (occasionally bordering on the odd and arcane but always interesting), you'll love this book. If you get frustrated when an author takes you off the narrative path and you really want a focused biography of Custer, then this book is not for you. Again, I found the book superb but can understand where some of the more negative reviews are coming from depending upon the reader's predelictions.
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Summary: Book review
Review: I can not praise this book enough, the descriptive narrative of this time in history is so vividly presented. This is my first book on the topic of The Little Big Horn and what a great introduction. I have spent the past two years devoted to World War Two studies and this book by Evan S. Connell was to me a nice change of pace. I will now have to divide my time between two great periods of history. I highly recommend this book, besides good history it is just plain fun to read.
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Summary: MORE CUSTER PUFFING?
Review: I enjoyed Son of the Morning Star so much I just finished a second reading. Others enjoying the book a lot should check out Black Sea by Neal Ascherson and And No Birds Sing by Mark Jaffe. The three books are similar, although it isn't easy to say in what way. The best I can do is to call them non-academic histories that are so well written, and have such compelling central themes, that you just can't put them down. They're also similarly filled with digressive narratives and descriptions of subjects peripherally related to their main themes, meanderings dear to the heart of fact-freaks like myself. A good short example from Connell's work begins with: "Then along came Blanche Boies, disciple of Carrie Nation." And Connell relates how in 1904 Blanche took a woodcutter's ax to a copy of Otto Becker's 1895 lithograph of Custer's last stand, which at the time was hanging in the Kansas State Historical Society in Fort Riley (the Seventh Cavalry's home fort). The reason Blanche axed the picture was that it had upon it an advertisement for Anheuser-Busch beer, Mr. Busch having come into possession of the picture before the Historical Society did. In less than a page, Connell decribes the law's attempts to dissuade Blanche from doing her duty to the lithograph and how she persisted and succeeded in the end. A very funny little story, painted with the strokes of a master. I do have one problem with Son of the Morning Star, which in fact was described as a "masterpiece" by Larry McMurtry in a letter to the New York Review of Books in 1999, a long fifteen years after the book was published. Evan Connell has a lot to say -- and a lot with little good -- about soldiers, the U.S. Government, Indian Agents, indians themselves, settlers and gold rushers, and the American public. As a dedicated misanthropist, I thought I had recognized a fellow soul in the author. Until I read Connell's characterization of the "constellation of traits in Custer. . (like). . .a demigod. . .Siegfried, Roland, Galahad." Now, I can go with Siegfried and Roland, but Galahad? Of the very few references to women other than Elizabeth Custer in the book's Index, there's Clara Blinn, a kidnapped white who with her infant son was in Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle's village when the Seventh massacred it in 1868. Subsequently, the Blinns' bodies were found near the village, the mother shot twice through the head, the infant's body so "little marked" that Connell surmises he was slung against a tree. Mrs. Blinn had got out a note to the U.S. Army pleading to be rescued but as Connell writes: "If Custer knew about this frantic plea, it made no difference. . . .His concern was . . .the destruction of an enemy stronghold." Custer loved children and animals, fine music, books, and battle, but from the evidence in Son of the Morning Star, he paid little attention to women, including his dear wife Elizabeth. And that's not my idea of a Galahad. Maybe I'm picking nits here, maybe that's the way it was out West then, maybe the author's subject was really the battle in some sense, and not George Armstrong Custer. But my overall impression remains: Connell treated Custer considerably more favorably than the groups mentioned above. Accordingly, I think the book contains Custer-puffing and I'd hold back the word masterpiece from describing it. Nonetheless and howsoever, this almost-materpiece by Evan Connell is some kind of a read, and I give it a high four stars.
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Summary: MORE CUSTER PUFFING?
Review: I enjoyed Son of the Morning Star so much I just finished a second reading. Others enjoying the book a lot should check out Black Sea by Neal Ascherson and And No Birds Sing by Mark Jaffe. The three books are similar, although it isn't easy to say in what way. The best I can do is to call them non-academic histories that are so well written, and have such compelling central themes, that you just can't put them down. They're also similarly filled with digressive narratives and descriptions of subjects peripherally related to their main themes, meanderings dear to the heart of fact-freaks like myself. A good short example from Connell's work begins with: "Then along came Blanche Boies, disciple of Carrie Nation." And Connell relates how in 1904 Blanche took a woodcutter's ax to a copy of Otto Becker's 1895 lithograph of Custer's last stand, which at the time was hanging in the Kansas State Historical Society in Fort Riley (the Seventh Cavalry's home fort). The reason Blanche axed the picture was that it had upon it an advertisement for Anheuser-Busch beer, Mr. Busch having come into possession of the picture before the Historical Society did. In less than a page, Connell decribes the law's attempts to dissuade Blanche from doing her duty to the lithograph and how she persisted and succeeded in the end. A very funny little story, painted with the strokes of a master. I do have one problem with Son of the Morning Star, which in fact was described as a "masterpiece" by Larry McMurtry in a letter to the New York Review of Books in 1999, a long fifteen years after the book was published. Evan Connell has a lot to say -- and a lot with little good -- about soldiers, the U.S. Government, Indian Agents, indians themselves, settlers and gold rushers, and the American public. As a dedicated misanthropist, I thought I had recognized a fellow soul in the author. Until I read Connell's characterization of the "constellation of traits in Custer. . (like). . .a demigod. . .Siegfried, Roland, Galahad." Now, I can go with Siegfried and Roland, but Galahad? Of the very few references to women other than Elizabeth Custer in the book's Index, there's Clara Blinn, a kidnapped white who with her infant son was in Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle's village when the Seventh massacred it in 1868. Subsequently, the Blinns' bodies were found near the village, the mother shot twice through the head, the infant's body so "little marked" that Connell surmises he was slung against a tree. Mrs. Blinn had got out a note to the U.S. Army pleading to be rescued but as Connell writes: "If Custer knew about this frantic plea, it made no difference. . . .His concern was . . .the destruction of an enemy stronghold." Custer loved children and animals, fine music, books, and battle, but from the evidence in Son of the Morning Star, he paid little attention to women, including his dear wife Elizabeth. And that's not my idea of a Galahad. Maybe I'm picking nits here, maybe that's the way it was out West then, maybe the author's subject was really the battle in some sense, and not George Armstrong Custer. But my overall impression remains: Connell treated Custer considerably more favorably than the groups mentioned above. Accordingly, I think the book contains Custer-puffing and I'd hold back the word masterpiece from describing it. Nonetheless and howsoever, this almost-materpiece by Evan Connell is some kind of a read, and I give it a high four stars.
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Summary: THIS IS IT!
Review: I have read many books about Custer, Little Big Horn and the plains indian wars, but this one is truly the very best of the lot. Connell has given us an exellent biography of Custer, but we also get to know such men as Major Reno and Captain Benteen. Indians such as Sitting Bull, Gall and Crazy Horse are also prominently featured in this treasure of a book. This is so much more than a book about Custer and his last stand at Little Big Horn river in 1876. It's a book about the whole drama, that is the conquering of the west. Also, the photo section is exellent and the bibliography is unparalelled. Two very good maps helps the reader follow the movements in the 1876 indian campaign. If You're gonna buy just one book about the American west, please choose "Son Of The Morning Star". It's history, for sure, but it's not boring. It's also a source book in the best sence of the word, not to mention a literary masterpiece. Connell is a novelist, and it shows in his quick and precise eye for charaters in the play and their often peculiar behavior and actions. The heroes and/or villains is only so human in this highly entertaining book that leaves the reader wanting more. I have so far never read a better book, fact or fiction. Why don't You read it too?
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