Son of the Morning Star: General Custer and the Battle of the Little Big- horn, by Evan S. Connell (Pimlico, £12.50 in UK)

Custer's end, though much mythologised at the time, seems to have been as anti-climactic and pointless as the Charge of the Light Brigade a few decades before. Leading only a small force of US cavalry, he rode foolhardily into the midst of 20,000 Indian braves and was massacred; squaws later mutilated the troopers' corpses. A few units of his command made a stand nearby in a hollow and survived, but were discredited professionally when the US Army held inquiries into the disaster. Custer, though a Civil War hero, seems to have lacked strategic sense and was an unattractive character personally (during the war, though married, he had scandalised fellow-officers by sleeping regularly with his remarkably ugly Black cook). There is a poignant description of the Irishman, Keogh, whose horse Comanche was one of the few survivors.