The latest book by AST Press!

Custer’s Heroes: The Little Bighorn Medals of Honor
By Douglas D. Scott

The Medal of Honor may appear as just a bit of metal hung on a strip of colored cloth, yet it is the highest award for valor that the U.S. government can confer on its combat soldiers. Unlike today’s pyramid of honor, the Medal of Honor was the ONLY official medallic award for gallantry in the nineteenth century.
At the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in southeastern Montana, the National Park Service’s visitor center features an exhibit on twenty-four soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor for acts of conspicuous gallantry during the battle on June 25-26, 1876.
In Custer’s Heroes: The Little Bighorn Medals of Honor, Douglas Scott places the Little Bighorn awards in the context of that century’s code of acceptable conduct for men in combat. He demonstrates that while the medal’s criteria in 1876 were not as rigid as today’s, they were not awarded indiscriminately. He points out that criteria developed by the reviewing officers who approved the Little Bighorn recommendations influenced awards of the medal for 25 years.
The Medal of Honor was intended as a unique badge of distinction when it was created during the Civil War. That reputation was not tarnished but polished by those men awarded the medal for the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
 

128 pages, 42 b&w illus., 2 maps
Cloth, 978-0-9745409-2-4, $29.95
Paper, 978-0-9745409-3-1, $19.95
 

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