
Custer's Trials
A Life on the Frontier of a New America
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Narrated by:
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Arthur Morey
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By:
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T.J. Stiles
About this listen
Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History
From the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award, a brilliant biography of Gen. George Armstrong Custer that radically changes our view of the man and his turbulent times.
In this magisterial biography, T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer’s legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer’s historical caricature, revealing a volatile, contradictory, intense person - capable yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (he was court-martialed twice in six years).
The key to understanding Custer, Stiles writes, is keeping in mind that he lived on a frontier in time. In the Civil War, the West, and many areas overlooked in previous biographies, Custer helped to create modern America, but he could never adapt to it. He freed countless slaves yet rejected new civil rights laws. He proved his heroism but missed the dark reality of war for so many others. A talented combat leader, he struggled as a manager in the West. He tried to make a fortune on Wall Street yet never connected with the new corporate economy. Native Americans fascinated him, but he could not see them as fully human. A popular writer, he remained apart from Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and other rising intellectuals.
During Custer’s lifetime, Americans saw their world remade. His admirers saw him as the embodiment of the nation’s gallant youth, of all that they were losing; his detractors despised him for resisting a more complex and promising future. Intimate, dramatic, and provocative, this biography captures the larger story of the changing nation in Custer’s tumultuous marriage to his highly educated wife, Libbie; their complicated relationship with Eliza Brown, the forceful Black woman who ran their household; as well as his battles and expeditions. It casts surprising new light on a near-mythic American figure, a man both widely known and little understood.
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Critic reviews
"Spectacular...a satisfying portrait of a complex, controversial military man.... Confidently presenting Custer in all his contradictions, Stiles examines the times to make sense of the man - and uses the man to shed light on the times." (Publishers Weekly)
"Stiles doesn't disappoint with this powerful, provocative biography.... A highly recommended modern biography that successfully illuminates the lives of Custer and his family as part of the changing patterns of American society." (Library Journal)
"A warts-and-all portrait.... Stiles digs deep to deliver genuine insight into a man who never adapted to modernity." (Kirkus Reviews)
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Performance
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Pulitzer Prize winner Larry McMurtry crafts works synonymous with the grandeur and beauty of the American West. Here McMurtry turns his attention to George A. Custer, a complex man who has captivated historians for over a century. From graduating last in his class at West Point to leading the ill-fated 7th Cavalry in the attack at Little Bighorn, Custer forged a legacy - still very much alive today - as one of the West's most enduring historical figures.
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A story that needed to be told!
- By Mike on 12-06-12
By: Larry McMurtry
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Lenin
- The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror
- By: Victor Sebestyen
- Narrated by: Jonathan Aris
- Length: 20 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on new research, including the diaries, memoirs, and personal letters of both Lenin and his friends, Victor Sebestyen's unique biography - the first in English in nearly two decades - is not only a political examination of one of the most important historical figures of the 20th century but a portrait of Lenin the man. Unexpectedly, Lenin was someone who loved nature, hunting, and fishing and could identify hundreds of species of plants, a despotic ruler whose closest ties and friendships were with women.
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Lenin totally took an extra piece of that cake.
- By John Gathly on 05-14-19
By: Victor Sebestyen
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Vicksburg
- Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy
- By: Donald L. Miller
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 21 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the last stronghold of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River. It prevented the Union from using the river for shipping between the Union-controlled Midwest and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The Union navy tried to take Vicksburg, which sat on a high bluff overlooking the river, but couldn't do it. It took Grant's army and Admiral David Porter's navy to successfully invade Mississippi and lay siege to Vicksburg, forcing the city to surrender.
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A superb account of the entire campaign
- By Mary on 08-26-20
By: Donald L. Miller
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The Gulf
- The Making of an American Sea
- By: Jack E. Davis
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America's sea - bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience - and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the Gulf until now. And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the 21st century.
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Decolonize gulf history
- By Jesse Carr on 05-02-18
By: Jack E. Davis
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Reagan
- The Life
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 31 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Ronald Reagan today is a conservative icon, celebrated for transforming the American domestic agenda and playing a crucial part in ending communism in the Soviet Union. In his masterful new biography, H. W. Brands argues that Reagan, along with FDR, was the most consequential president of the 20th century. Reagan took office at a time when the public sector, after a half century of New Deal liberalism, was widely perceived as bloated and inefficient, an impediment to personal liberty.
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Very little about Reagan
- By Jack Merritt on 07-30-15
By: H. W. Brands
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Hoover
- An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times
- By: Kenneth Whyte
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 27 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The definitive biography of Herbert Hoover, one of the most remarkable Americans of the 20th century - a revisionist account that will forever change the way Americans understand the man, his presidency, and his battle against the Great Depression. A poor orphan who built a fortune, a great humanitarian, a president elected in a landslide and then routed in the next election, arguably the father of both New Deal liberalism and modern conservatism - Herbert Hoover is also one of our least understood presidents.
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What a fascinating story!
- By Dan Ryan on 11-18-17
By: Kenneth Whyte
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The Sixth Extinction
- An Unnatural History
- By: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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A major audiobook about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes. Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on Earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
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Lifts you out of the ordinary
- By Regina on 04-28-14
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Napoleon
- A Life
- By: Andrew Roberts
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 32 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrew Roberts' Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon's thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine.
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What a dynamo!
- By Tad Davis on 01-16-15
By: Andrew Roberts
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Peter the Great
- His Life and World
- By: Robert K. Massie
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 43 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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This superbly told story brings to life one of the most remarkable rulers––and men––in all of history and conveys the drama of his life and world. The Russia of Peter's birth was very different from the Russia his energy, genius, and ruthlessness shaped. Crowned co-Tsar as a child of ten, after witnessing bloody uprisings in the streets of Moscow, he would grow up propelled by an unquenchable curiosity, everywhere looking, asking, tinkering, and learning, fired by Western ideas.
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Narrater ruins everything
- By BrendaLouQuilts on 12-30-11
By: Robert K. Massie
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Founding Brothers
- The Revolutionary Generation (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Bob Walter
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic - John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.
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Great!
- By Gotta Tellya on 08-10-16
By: Joseph J. Ellis
I believed this to be a biography of George A Custer and, to some extent, it was precisely that. However Mr Stiles has also given us a broad view of life during Custer's lifetime and that broad view helps to explain much of what Custer did and why. The book starts with Custer's application to and acceptance at West Point, follows his life through West Point, through his life on George McClellan's military staff and his appointment as a general and his first commands. It then describes his life after the Civil War, his re-entry into the military and his life through various commands until his assignment to the 7th Cavalry and the battle of the Little Big Horn.
The book is long (at 23+ hours), but is never boring. Along with Custer's life the author takes time to describe the changes taking place in that nation so we have a good and detailed explanation of President Johnson's conflict with the Republican congress after the end of the Civil War, the reasons for his impeachment, Custer's meddling in politics and his opposition to the reconstruction policies of President Grant, the influence of the rise of a new type of capitalism and the Vanderbilts, Goulds and the Guilded Age, Custer's literary attempts and the failures of his attempts to make money in speculation. There is also a great deal of time spent on the problems Custer had with his military and civilian superiors Grant, Sherman and Sheridan toward the end of his career.
This is a very good book and provides a clear picture of what life was like in the middle to late 19th century, but in my view it is tarnished by the author's unwillingness to avoid psychoanalyzing Custer and inventing motives for his actions. A good deal of information comes from Custer's letters to his life Elizabeth as well as to his friends and other family and these make fascinating reading. Custer opposed the attempts by the Federal Government to protect the liberated slaves and to ensure that they had the vote and should be rightly judged for his segregationist views and his attempts to oppose Reconstruction, but the author should also understand that Custer was not alone among northerners with these views and that the age was one of common opposition to equality. It is right to judge Custer, but not to judge Custer alone.
The book is narrated wonderfully by Author Morey and I recommend it for anyone with an interest in the middle to late 19th century in the United States.
Custer and his times
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23 Hrs and 44 minutes of Enjoyed Listening
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Stiles's impeccable research and prowess of narration and prose reenacted the unique, painful and sinful history of america.
general custer is like most of us, not sort of ambition and fleeting lucks. what he missed or omitted as the nation did, is the moral compass and dare I say, the moral high ground.
OMG, what the murderous bullet never found the skull of Lincohn!
civil war and indian war in the eye of General Cus
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Insightful
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A incitful picture of a very different america,
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masterpiece
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Last in His Class
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too long
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Wonderful biography
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A caricature becomes a real person
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