One of my bucket list to-do's is to visit the Bighorn Monument and stand on the site where the 7th Cavalry was slaughtered. It would chill my blood.
I will look into the Stiles bio and very possibly add it to my collection of Custer-abilia. Thanks for the recommendation.
I need to caution you that Stiles does NOT go into a discussion of “Custer’s Last Stand” but discusses the rest of his life and is good on his fighting the Indians prior to the Little Big Horn battle. He closes with an examination of the court of inquiry over Reno and Benteen’s action that happened several years later. He recommends several books to the reader for accounts of that LBH battle.
He shows how Custer was very competent as cavalry commander during the Civil War and prior to the LBH. He does not denigrate Custer about LBH but makes sure that the reader knows the role Custer and the 7th Cavalry played as 1/3d of the forces being sent against the alliance of tribes that were gathering in the Montana territory.