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 [3]. 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 [4], Roberto Ontiveros reviews John Phillip Santos' The Farthest Home is an Empire of Fire: A Tejano Elegy [5], but deals more with the author's personal pilgrimage than his search for his family's origins.
Also in the Seattle Times [6] is a review of Susan Kushner Resnick's Goodbye Wifes and Daughters [7], 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 [7].