As strategic US military defeats go, Custer's Last Stand - as it has come to be known - ranks right up near the top. Though many of you may know the shady outlines about how General George Armstrong Custer and his monster ego were whipped like a junkyard dog by the brilliant and charismatic Sitting Bull, you will gasp in wonder and awe at just how much you don't know.

Philbrick's book takes names and places and gives them faces and allows for these historical sites to be truly uncovered. He brings forth the human emotions the great and those striving-for-greatness always embody - violence, exploration, domination - and sets them down in the rugged and beautiful Great Plains of America.

To fully flesh out the story, the author even broke bread with the great-grandson of Sitting Bull and was allowed access to writings from a soldier who was there. What is revealed is the tale of a general who was ruthless, reckless and fearless, a man his men hated and adored. The rest of the characters are also given voice: Crazy Horse; Wooden Leg; Major Marcus Reno; Captain Frederick Benteen; and Custer's wife, Libby.