Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1934 Introduction Copyright 1988 |
"Frederic F. Van de Water has written the Custer book to end all Custer books....[It is] based upon profound research...[and a] thorough understanding of the motivations which shaped Custer's meteoric career." --Books "Mr. Van de Water has accumulated evidence until it can hardly be questioned. There is enough of it to damn the man as hard, cruel, and irresponsible....At any rate, the story has an epic movement, and at last is heart-stirring and somberly beautiful." --New York Times "General Custer was a tangle of contradictions. His wife 'enshrined her husband in the folklore of America.' Now Mr. Van de Water, without fear or favor, gives us a complete and unsparing analysis of the man."--William Rose Benet, Saturday Review of Literature "All his life, he rode after Glory," writes Frederic F. Van de Water of George Armstrong Custer. Ironically, he found it at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. In his introduction to the Bison Book edition, Paul Andrew Hutton considers the importance of Glory-Hunter, which appeared in 1934 as the first biography to depict Custer in unheroic terms. |