When the campaign ended, Custer and his troops had been defeated at the Little Bighorn and General George Crook had met with near-disaster at the Rosebud. Nevertheless, the brilliant Oglala Sioux chief Crazy Horse was dead, Sitting Bull and his band had been driven to Canada, and the military power of the Sioux and the Northern Cheyennes was broken. The government achieved its aims, but the casualties both sides had suffered made these wars the most unnecessary ever fought between the federal government and the Indians.

"A provocative analysis... (and) sophisticated use of Native American accounts.... This sympathetic account will appeal especially to those interested in Native American culture and history". -- Publishers Weekly.

"Narrative history does not get much better than this". -- Booklist.

"A Good Year to Die has been solidly researched and is clearly presented, a book of permanent value to Western history fanatics". -- Los Angeles Times.

"Robinson early on strikes the right theme: that the Great Sioux War marked the inevitable end of a way of life in North America and its replacement with a kind of sedentary dependence on the white man's bureaucracy". -- New York Times.