Reader recommendation: The Last Stand

Monitor readers share their favorite book picks.

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and The Battle of The Little Big Horn by Nathaniel Philbrick explains that there was really very little fighting at all at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Custer's men had been split into three segments, two of which had little idea of what was happening to Custer. The entire battle lasted about 20 minutes with little or no resistance. What fascinated me was how it compared with Thomas Marquis's 1985 version 'Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself' which also states that there was little fighting and that many of the soldiers committed suicide to avoid torture. These versions of the battle are very unpopular to Custer fans.