Custer's Trials

T. J. Stiles, Author, Custer's Trials

This program is part of the Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.

In his biography of George Armstrong Custer, T. J. Stiles—winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award—demolishes Custer’s historical caricature by focusing on how he lived, rather than how he died. A celebrity at 23, controversial at 26, Custer immersed himself in the making of the modern United States—as a professional soldier, politician, popular writer, outdoorsman, and financier—yet he could never adapt to the times he helped to create.

Stiles paints an intimate portrait of a volatile public figure, highlighting the women who surrounded him, as he finds surprising new significance in a life that stretched from West Point to Wall Street to the Western frontier.