Far West Publishing, 4940 Viking Drive Suite 505, Edina, MN, 55435, 1996.

This book, which was evidently a labor of love for its author, is a provocative contribution to the controversies surrounding George Armstrong Custer and his "last stand" at Little Big Horn in 1876. It is a beautiful volume which students of military history should find fascinating and wargamers of the Indian wars useful.

LITTLE BIG HORN is amply illustrated; it has thirty-two pages of color plates, showing nineteenth century paintings of Indians and cavalry done by Otto Becker, Karl Bodmer, Henry H. Cross, Frederick Remington, Charles M. Russell, and Charles Schreyvogel. There are also a great many black and white pictures, and many maps, including some excellent studies of the battlefield. A gamer interested in painting figures and refighting the campaign and battle will find much inspiration and information here.

The author's primary interest is in arguing that the disaster at Little Big Horn was the fault of Custer's subordinates Reno and Benteen, rather than of Custer himself. To this end Nightengale has done some original research himself, an impressive feat at this late date given that this controversy has been debated in dozens if not hundreds of books for the past 120 years.

The author's new material includes an FBI analysis of handwriting on petitions relating to promotion of Reno and Benteen after the battle, as well as an acoustical study of where and how far away shots could have been heard on the battlefield. The author's thesis (an old one but offered here with new evidence) is that Custer's converging attack by multiple columns was a perfectly workable plan, but that Custer's subordinates retreated unnecessarily and abandoned their comrades to their fate.

This reviewer is by no means an expert on Custer or on this battle, but he is a former US Army infantry officer and a veteran of hundreds of wargames. He has also studied closely the Civil War battle of Trevilian Station, in which Custer rashly led his brigade through a hole in the Confederate lines, attacked and dispersed the Rebel horse holders but in the process scattered his own command, and then was counterattacked from three directions by Southern cavalry who came very close to achieving "Custer's last stand" thirteen years early. The author does not mention Trevilian Station in his brief summary of Custer's Civil War career.

To this reviewer, however, this earlier battle illustrates Custer's aggressiveness-to-the point-of-rashness. Military writers have often stressed, moreover, that a converging attack is a highly risky proposition, precisely because of the potential for miscommunications and lack of coordination of its separate elements. The author has persuaded the reviewer that Reno and Benteen were less than heroic and perhaps even less than honorable, and that they share a large measure of blame for the disaster; but he has not convinced the reviewer that Custer himself was blameless.

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