This is not a book that I would ordinarily read. It was a selection for my book club, and one of the reasons that I like being part of a book club is that I am forced to read books that I wouldn't otherwise. Such as The Last Stand. I had difficulty with it. I had trouble following the characters and the story because Philbrick has an annoying habit of jumping around in the time line, cross-referencing other battles and events in the midst of the story he is trying to tell. It provided back story, but I found it very hard to follow. I also think that not knowing really anything about the Battle of Little Bighorn made it more confusing. I believe there is an assumption on the part of the author of a general level of knowledge and I found myself browsing Wikipedia to get an overall understanding about what happened so I could understand the book better.

In spite of all this I was intrigued by the events and couldn't help but continue on and finish. The story is really a fascinating one and it is amazing how much arrogance, personal grudges and quests for glory were a part of the events that unfolded. The treatment of the Native American society by the American government is truly shameful, and something I don't think we spend enough time exploring. There is a lot of relevance to be drawn between these events and current affairs. I would like to say that such atrocities could not happen now—that we know better—but I look back over the twentieth century and know we are no better over 100 years after Little Bighorn. From the internment of Japanese during WWII, the violence of the civil rights movement, to the current oppression of rights to gays and lesbians, and the enormous backlash against Muslim Americans, it seems like many of us are caught in one giant circle of willful ignorance and self-righteousness. If it came down to it, what lengths would we go to in order to protect our oil interests in other countries, and how does that differ from taking the land from Native Americans to expand the gold interests of the time? Is the insistence on drilling in the Arctic landscape and the effects that will have on wildlife and the ecosystem any different? Philbrick mentions WMDs threatening to destroy humanity as our current last stand, but I believe it is more our refusal to accept the consequences of our actions on the environment and the slow destruction of the planet that is really our last stand. The recent oil spill in the Gulf Coast is simply the latest example of something people call a "tragic accident" but in truth it is a preventable disaster due to negligence and greed. We didn't respect the land in the time of the westward migration, and we don't now. And it is catching up to us.