VENGEANCE: The Last Stands of Custer, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull

VENGEANCE: The Last Stands of Custer, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull
TOM CLAVIN
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A dramatic new look at Custer's last stand in time for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, by the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Heart of Everything That Is.

On June 25–26, 1876, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was fought between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. Along the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, the battle resulted in the devastating defeat of U.S. forces and was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876.

Now, for the 150th anniversary of this famous engagement, #1 New York Times bestseller and coauthor of the biography of Sioux warrior Red Cloud, The Heart of Everything That Is, Tom Clavin takes a fresh look at Custer's Last Stand.

This dramatic look at the Little Bighorn battle has to not only include the Native American point of view―with two dynamic Native figures, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, on prominent display―but also the impact it had on the Plains Indians. It turned out to be their last stand too because a vengeful nation quashed any remaining resistance, with a conclusive massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, almost simultaneous with the murder of Sitting Bull.

In addition, Custer’s character by June 1876 is at the heart of this world-famous disaster. For all his celebrated bravery, especially at Gettysburg 13 years earlier, Custer became a devout media hound, desperate to gain fame. Even, some say, his own demise was a misguided attempt at grabbing national headlines: He envisioned a massacre – just not his own. As both the camera and the tabloid came of age, George Armstrong Custer became America’s first bona fide celebrity.

Vengeance is a thrilling read, filled with action, legendary characters, and poignance for the impact this had on Native Americans and the shape of the American West.

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My Review: I wondered what the hell there could be left to say about this military engagement that could illuminate the events in a light, through a lens and filter, that could deepen the focus and increase the contrast. "Hold my beer" said Author Clavin.

I know there are full biographies of all the men at the center of the story being told, excellent ones that delve into psychology, racism, nationalistic myth-making and resistance to it. The short chapters and broad focus of this historical analysis of causes and effects can't offer that depth or completeness. It can, and does, offer more accessible takes on the dramatis personae and thus that much more context for the pyrrhic victory won at the Little Bighorn River.

It's not a story where breaking news is likely to occur...the souces cited in the notes tell you we're not hot on the trail of some newly discovered textual evidence breaking open some of the enduring mysteries of Custer's uncharacteristically stupid actions. It's not that book; it's very much a useful primer, broadening its intended white, history-buff audience's awareness of how the battle looked from its different combatants' eyes. I enjoyed the quick-hit chapters because I'm only very slightly interested in the battle bits, more in the people bits. The carnage is not stinted herein. But we're not *immersed* in it because no piece of the story as retold here lasts long enough to make the reader feel he's going to need to scrub blood off his footgear after the read.

It's a popularization of more scholarly, and a contextualization of more white-triumphalist, works that have come before it. As I do not care to subject myself to the dizzying heights/depths od historiographic work done on Manifest Destiny and its concomitant Native American genocide, it's a work that suited my reading needs.

LIGHTBORNE: A Novel, the best stories are in History

LIGHTBORNE: A Novel
HESSE PHILLIPS
Pegasus Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$27.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A thrilling reimagining of the last days of one of the most famed Elizabethan playwrights—Christopher Marlowe—and of a love that flourishes within the margins.

Christopher playwright, poet, lover. In the plague-stricken streets of Elizabethan England, Kit flirts with danger, leaving a trail of enemies and old flames in his wake. His plays are a roaring success; he seems destined for greatness. But in the spring of 1593, the queen's eyes are everywhere and the air is laced with paranoia.

Marlowe receives an unwelcome visit from his one-time mentor, Richard Baines, a man who knows all of Marlowe’s secrets and is hell-bent on his destruction. When Marlowe is arrested on charges of treason, heresy, and sodomy—all of which are punishable by death—he is released on bail with the help of Sir Thomas Walsingham.

Kit presumes Walsingham to be his friend; in fact, the spymaster has hired an assassin to take care of Kit, fearing that his own sins may come to light. Now, with the queen's spies and the vengeful Baines closing in on the playwright, Marlowe's last friend in the world is Ingram Frizer, a total stranger who is obsessed with Kit's plays, and who will, within ten days' time, first become Marlowe's lover—and then his killer.

Richly atmospheric, emotionally devastating, and heartrendingly imagined, Lightborne is a masterful reimagining of the last days of one of England's most famous literary figures.

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My Review: I doubt too many unabashedly gay men throughout history are as well-known to modern audiences as Marlowe. He is one of the few in History whose sexuality does not get the "oh, no of course he was just as straight as string" treatment from the "eww-ick" homophobes. Goodness knows they've tried, but it never gets past the "no he isn't because I said no he isn't" level of argument.

No, he was, and he said so too loudly for History to get their anxious denials to be believed.

The delight of this novel, however, is the unnerving time it chooses to bring to life, that terrible last bit of existence after Marlowe left prison for the last time knowing he was not going to be allowed to live much longer for fear of what he knew becoming public knowledge. It was not an unreasonable fear, Marlowe was not a reticent man. It was possible to provoke him into indiscreet speech; he knew embarrassing truths; therefore....

It's never, ever been safe to know things about powerful people that can't be said in public. I suspect that Marlowe, poor lamb, besides being a startlingly bad judge of character was also just as addicted to risk as he was to tobacco. In the story we're told here, by a scholar of Marlowe, his life, and the times, Ingram Frizer is not with Marlowe by mere happenstance but in the role of minder while the decision of what to do about him and the risks he poses to the great and the good is determined. What actually occurs follows the official version established at law...but the unspoken and unspeakable parts are revealed.

I would give this wonderfully textured, nuanced work more stars were it not for something I'm sorry to say is a failing of mine in reading about my bygone ancestral queers: I want writers to choose a side, I want to know what they think, in every case but this one. I'm not saying Marlowe was straight, or gay, or any other modern label because I really believe you can't impute an identity to someone whose worldview quite simply didn't contain it. The torturer should as plausibly think of himself as a serial killer and a sadist if Marlowe was taking the identity "queer." "Sodomite" meant someone who performed acts of sodomy, not someone's fundamental identity. It's no small point to me.

The author, in the epilogue, presents really fun-to-read ideas about Marlowe from days gone by, from the "no he isn't because I said no he isn't" brigade, and from those like me who say identities aren't fungible. He's got sound reasoning for his viewpoint. If Marlowe was alive today he'd very likely be in a leather club somewhere making some platoon of horny men very happy. But he isn't.

For me that's a problem buying into this character. YMMV, and I seriously hope it will. Oh, and Frizer? A real man. I would not be one bit surprised if the role he plays in this story is not precisely the role he played in Deptford.

MORTAL REPUBLIC: How Rome Fell into Tyranny, using History to explain the present pretty convincingly

MORTAL REPUBLIC: How Rome Fell into Tyranny
EDWARD J. WATTS
Basic Books
$18.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Learn why the Roman Republic collapsed—and how it could have continued to thrive—with this insightful history from an award-winning author.

In Mortal Republic, prize-winning historian Edward J. Watts offers a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains why Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy. For centuries, even as Rome grew into the Mediterranean’s premier military and political power, its governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs successfully fostered negotiation and compromise.

By the 130s BC, however, Rome’s leaders increasingly used these same tools to cynically pursue individual gain and obstruct their opponents. As the center decayed and dysfunction grew, arguments between politicians gave way to political violence in the streets. The stage was set for destructive civil wars—and ultimately the imperial reign of Augustus.

The death of Rome’s Republic was not inevitable. In Mortal Republic, Watts shows it died because it was allowed to, from thousands of small wounds inflicted by Romans who assumed that it would last forever.

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My Review: The Mary Beard School of Skepticism About Past as Prologue is in session.

The past is no Oracle and historians are not prophets, but this does not mean that it is wrong to look to antiquity for help understanding the present.

This is intensely controversial. I am not at all sure it is true, but after reading this thoroughly researched and well sourced in the facts that we can know book, I'll put a pin in my inclination to doubt. I can enjoy this book on its factual merits quite well enough.

The author focuses his attention on the period between the victory of the Romans over Carthage in the Second Punic War, and Octavian's usurpation of power, effectively beginning the Empire. That time, its unrest and gradual normalization of political gridlock and, ultimately, violence, does bear a resemblance to the current pass in US–and world–politics.

I have no kick with that fact being pointed out. I am pretty confident the author's analysis of what led up to the events, and how what went down made the resolution of the problems seem pretty obvious. The way he has used the chapter order is, pretty clearly, tendentious...a downward slide from functioning, if troubled republic into one-man rule and autocracy just *feels* more and more inevitable as the facts we know are marshaled.

Where I go a little off his carefully laid rails is where he posits his ideas for how the slide was not inevitable, and the autocracy could've been avoided. That is allohistory which, by itself, is fine by me. But this is presented with a very authoritative air, not differentiated from the text based on facts that surrounds it, and that felt a bit like I was being led to agree without any facts or evidence that his conclusions were plausible. There can not be any such evidence or facts because that isn't how things *did* play out. I can't say he's wrong for all the same reasons.

The desire to show us how to fix the ugly, scary passage we're going through by using the past as a model makes a lot of sense. It still shouldn't be presented as being the equal of the fact-based narrative around it.

Your history-loving giftee, your anxious old uncle who just knows The End Is Nigh, will lap up this story. The good thing is that, as the facts pile up, the author hands the reader this double-edged aerçu:

No republic is eternal. It lives only as long as its citizens want it.

That is hopeful, if you believe there is a chance to warn and arm people against what is occurring; and disheartening, because look what happened to Rome.

The author is of the former opinion, and this book is the case he makes for it.