Pulitzer Prize-winning historian T. J. Stiles joins the show to talk about George Armstrong Custer, and the art of biography writing. As one of the leading authors of the Gilded Age we also take on the question of periodization, uncomfortable history, and unlikeable historical figures.

Essential Reading:

T.J. Stiles, Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America (2016).

Recommended Reading:

Robert Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891 (1974).

Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (1987).

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