T. J. Stiles has held the Gilder Lehrman Fellowship in American History at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, taught at Columbia University, and served as adviser for the PBS series "The American Experience." His first book, JESSE JAMES: Last Rebel of the Civil War, won the Ambassador Book Award and the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship, and was a New York Times Notable Book. THE FIRST TYCOON won the National Book Award in 2009. He has written for The New York Times Book Review, Salon.com, Smithsonian and the Los Angeles Times. He lives in San Francisco.

Books by T. J. Stiles

Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

by T. J. Stiles - Biography, History, Nonfiction

T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Gen. George Armstrong Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer’s legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer’s historical caricature, revealing a volatile, contradictory, intense person --- capable yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (he was court-martialed twice in six years).