NOV 17: First ‘Unheroic’ Custer Book Comes Out

On Nov. 17, 1934, a book reviewer said of Frederic F. Van de Water, author of the newest book at the time on George Custer, “(he) has written the Custer book to end all Custer books.”

Author Frederic F. Van de Water’s book, ‘Glory-Hunter’.

It was “Glory-Hunter: A Life of General Custer,” published by Bobb-Merrill Company. It is credited as being the first biography to depict Custer in unheroic terms. “Here, at last, was a biography that dismantled the marble hero of the past and created instead an understandable, believable human being,” Paul Andrew Hutton wrote in the book’s Introduction.

Hutton wrote that Van de Water:

“Crafted his compelling narrative to portray truthfully a brutal and strict commander who was dangerously insubordinate; a soldier distrusted by many of his own officers and men and yet worshipped by others; a man of little military talent whose victories were often the result of incredible good fortune, the action of more cautions subordinates, or overwhelming odds in his favor. Finally, ineptitude, arrogance, and his headlong pursuit of glory conspired to destroy Van de Water’s Custer at the Little Big Horn.”