Nathaniel Philbrick's The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, drew more notices last week, including a review in the Seattle Times. Steve Raymond finds the work offers a new perspective, although one may doubt the consideration of the experiences of all combatants -- Indian and non-Indian -- is truly as novel as it once might have been. In the Austin American Statesman, Roberto Ontiveros reviews John Phillip Santos' The Farthest Home is an Empire of Fire: A Tejano Elegy, but deals more with the author's personal pilgrimage than his search for his family's origins.

Also in the Seattle Times is a review of Susan Kushner Resnick's Goodbye Wifes and Daughters, the story of the 1943 Bearcreek, Montana, mine explosion that claimed 75 miners. Lisa Bonos writes that Resnick does "does an admirable job of breathing life into the story of a small town's demise" and the exploring causes of the disaster. A copy of Goodbye Wifes and Daughters is available for use in the Western History & Genealogy Department.