Stiles portrays a real Custer, full of flaws but possessed of outstanding combat skills and leadership, both in the Civil War and on the western frontier. The biography easily overshadows its many predecessors, offering new facts and interpretations.

Historian T.J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, demonstrating how much of Custer's legacy has been ignored. He refutes 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. During Custer's lifetime, Americans saw their world remade. 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. 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. He freed countless slaves, yet rejected new civil rights la