Books like Crazy Horse and Custer — picked by fans

James Donovan combined impeccable research with an engaging style to produce the best book about the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The battle is the subject of more books than just about any other fight in American history, but Donovan’s has set a new standard. I referred to the book regularly while writing my biography of Custer. You can’t really begin to understand a complex battle like the Little Bighorn without a seasoned guide. But Donovan doesn’t just explain the battle. He writes in a way that gives his book the feel of a novel rather than a dry recitation of facts. A Terrible Glory will take you on an exciting ride and teach you everything you need to know about Custer’s Last Stand.

When I first heard about Custer’s Trials, I thought it was almost sacrilegious to write a biography of the Boy General without a full, descriptive chapter on the Last Stand. Stiles instead covered the battle in an epilogue about the Court of Enquiry into the conduct of Maj. Marcus Reno at the Little Bighorn, where he was Custer’s second in command. Nevertheless, Stiles’ book is an engrossing psychological portrait of Custer that puts his life in the context of his times. Stiles addresses the changes in American culture—moving toward a modern, industrial society—that shaped the lives of the Civil War generation. You’ll not only get a new view of Custer from reading Custer’s Trials, you’ll get a better understanding of the development of the United States.

What is a better way to understand history than to hear from those who made it? I’ve read Custer’s memoir several times and always enjoyed it immensely. Did he exaggerate parts of it? Maybe. After all, he was raised in the bragging, tall-tale culture of Ohio and refined that art on the lonely Army posts on the Plains. Custer had a self-deprecating style that allowed him to make fun of himself for accidentally shooting his horse yet he could put you on the edge of the seat when he took you with him into combat. My Life on the Plains is an excellent view of the life of a cavalryman doing service that Custer found was often distasteful and unappreciated by the civilians the soldiers protected. 

I bought this book in Chicago and read all 151 pages on a flight back to Dallas. Soldier Boy is a young adult fiction book that grabbed me from the first-page description of a bare-knuckle fight between the teenage protagonist, Johnny “the Kid” McBane, and an unnamed palooka in a gritty Chicago gambling house. McBane joins the Army to escape some hoodlums, and the story never lets up as it takes him to the frontier and eventually the Little Bighorn. I’ve many read many fictionalized accounts of the Little Bighorn. This is the best. Soldier Boy is a great read but also an excellent insight into the experience of many underage soldiers in the frontier Army. The ending will stay with you long after you finish the book.

Native Americans have played a strong role in my life over the decades, especially as teachers of wisdom.

Reading Medicine Woman for the first time, I immediately connected with Lynn’s Native American teachers, Agnes and Ruby and learned a great deal through her journey to find her inner power. Her teachers brought forth ancient knowledge by way of the sacred feminine which felt familiar to my heart and soul, familiar to my indigenous people, the Chaldeans, Neo-Babylonians who still speak Aramaic.

Each time I re-read this book, I find something new that speaks to me. 

Horse stealing was more than theft of valuable and essential property. Matthew Luckett explains that on the Great Plains horse stealing “destabilized communities, institutions, nations, diplomatic relations, and cross-cultural exchange.” Luckett challenges many popular notions about horse thieves (for starters, they were not hung).  There were different kinds of horse theft and horse thieves. Don’t be misled by “Nebraska” in the title—this book shows that horse stealing had regional and national repercussions.   Luckett is an engaging writer, and this book is extremely readable and filled with compelling stories. I particularly recommend the chapter “The Horse Wars” about the role of horses in the war the U.S. Army waged against the Indians. 

Gregg traveled the trail many times relating its wonders and its economics. He tells his own story of adventure on the plains. Commerce may sound boring, but Gregg was a keen observer and commented on all that he saw, treating it as fresh and new. He talks of the customs of Mexicans and Native Americans as well as of what each wanted in trade. 

For this book, Lajimodiere dedicated much time and effort over years to listen and record boarding school experiences of Native Americans, especially in the northern Plains, acknowledging different forms of schools that threatened Native American lives, families, and peoplehood. Her book encapsulates the voices of the survivors who testify of their struggles and those who did not survive the boarding school colonizing machine that sought to control Indigenous youth and their communities.

Lajimodiere epitomizes an activist scholar who has worked to trace as many Indian boarding schools in the United States as possible, and she has been foundational to the development of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition that is spearheading efforts for truth and healing from the adverse impacts and legacies of boarding schools.

This nonfiction book is not only dear to my heart, I can also honestly say it changed my life.

It’s about the only Federal Emergency School ever created. Built for the children of farm workers displaced by the Dust Bowl in 1940, it tells of School Superintendent Leo B. Hart’s ingenuity and steadfast devotion to children who faced seemingly insurmountable hardships and discrimination as occupants of the migrant camp outside Bakersfield, California that inspired John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

I taught at this school, now known as Sunset, for many years, and I kept a note in my lesson planner that read What would Leo B. Hart do? 

If you combined a personal essay with a compelling travelogue and wove in thoroughly researched history, you’d get Ian Frazier’s book The Great Plains. Frazier’s excellent writing immediately pulled me into his rambles across one of the least visited, and least understood, portions of our country. I learned so much about the Great Plains without even trying by simply reading this great book. If you’re already a fan, or if you’ve never really considered the Great Plains, this book will enlighten and inspire you to learn more and maybe even visit this sprawling, and important, American landscape.