Custer's Road to Disaster: The Path To Little Bighorn [Paperback]

He rose to the Army's pinnacles at age 23, earning him the endearing title boy general . But Mr. Sullivan says there's more to it than high rank at young age. George Armstrong Custer's boyhood  impetuous, rash, carefree, even rebellious  never disappeared, molding the icon's battle successes and failures, most notably his last hurrah at the Little Big Horn. Was it all foreordained? A provocative read, this road to disaster invites you to be the judge.Richard Allan Fox, author of Archaeology, History, and Custer's Last Battle Kevin M. Sullivan has written the best biography ever published about George Armstrong Custer and a page turner to boot! Unlike other books about GAC that just concentrate on the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sullivan starts literally at the Boy General's birth, taking him forward through childhood and into adulthood. He shows how his personality was formed, making the final debacle inevitable. He also treats Custer with the respect he is due as a great soldier who if he hadn't perished in his late 30s might have gone onto a very successful political career. So if you want to get an entirely new perspective on an American icon, read this book! Fred Rosen, author, Lobster BoyIn this laudatory history, true crime writer Sullivan (Vampire: The Richard Chase Murders) traces the short and parabolic life of George Armstrong Custer from his inauspicious start at West Point, where he finished last in his class, to his inglorious end at Little Bighorn, where he and over 250 of his men were killed by a force of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians. While at the military academy, Custer demonstrated in nearly every way possible his lack of qualifications for leading men into battlehis academic marks were abysmal and he routinely racked up nearly enough demerits to warrant expulsion, yet his boyish antics made him popular with classmates. Nevertheless, the Union needed every officer it could wrangle for the impending Civil War. During the conflict, lS?