Lots of Facts & Analysis -- Brutal Organization or Lack Thereof

books:

	• Son of the Morning Star Evan S. Connell BBS Publishing Corporation, 1998 average customer review:based on 56 reviews
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highly recommended

Lots of Facts & Analysis -- Brutal Organization or Lack Thereof

This slightly dated work by an accomplished novelist is well worth slugging through its lack of organization and meanderings to extract the huge compendium of facts contained therein. Please note; while other readers have thought this was an historical novel, it isn't fiction. It would deserve five stars if better organized and possessed a better index, but alas, one can't have everything. The reader will read and note a fact or story, but find himself unable to locate it later without reading through the entire book again.

The "slightly dated" aspect is deserved as it, a 1984 work, does not contain the archeological data unearthed by Fox et al since that time. Nonetheless, for sheer facts, statements, and opinions, this is the reader's single best source on the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

I recommend this book for purchase and reading.

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A Captivating Read

Those who study the Little Big Horn battle seem to fall into two camps where this work is concerned, some love it for it literary style, others loath it as it doesn't adhere to a strict timeline in recounting the events preceding and encompassing the battle. Instead, this book is a literary collage but its coverage is so well written that it is absolutely captivating. It encapsulates the spirit and mystery of the Little Big Horn like no other book. It's all here-the "hotspur" Custer as Connell calls him, the defiant Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, Reno described by the Crow scouts as "frothing at the mouth," the surly Benteen, Keogh and Comanche, spurious survivor stories galore and the evocative landscape of the battlefield itself. All captured in words and conveyed in a highly entertaining manner. It's almost as if Connell says we can never solve all the mysteries of this battle, so let's dispense with chronological history and just have fun! Besides, there are tons of excellent histories that do follow the conventional route that one can turn to for a more ordered look.

My first visit to the Little Big Horn took place in 1994 and I took a special paid tour that included the Crow's Nest. I remember our guide talking about Connell and how, when he was shown factual errors in the first edition of this book, he readily agreed to change them and acknowledlged his mistakes. Our guide said that not all authors are that way where their books are concerned. Speaks well of him and his book. Only drawback--the index is very scanty so don't rely on it if you look for references for, say, the names of all of Custer's officers.

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A wonderful narrative, impossible to categorize

On a whim, I purchased this book at a London bookshop in the late 1980's, and was immediately captivated by it. Since then, I have reread Son of the Morning Star at least half-a-dozen times, each time with greater pleasure. Notwithstanding the passage of more than two decades since its original publication, "Son of the Morning Star" remains magisterial. One Amazon review I read denigrated this book because it was, according to the writer, inadequate for the serious historian. Perhaps. There exists no shortage of books devoted to Custer, intended for the "serious historian," among them Evan's 1999 exhaustive "Custer's Last Fight." "Son of the Morning Star" does not purport to cater to the "serious historian." It is, as Dee Brown remarked, "unique and for that reason should endure." Buy it. Read it.

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Son of the Morning Star

I have been to the battlefield and have read and seen numerous documentaries of the Big Horn" battle (even watched the made for television series by the same title as this book), and I can say that the series was not as good as the book and neither has anything else I have seen or read about that fatal day in Montana over one hundred and thirty years ago.

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Stunning photographs of the famed battle at Little Bighorn highlight this impressive volume containing a vivid non-fiction narrative of General Custer's last battle.

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