Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War-Quality Guarantee

Description

In this brilliant biography T. J. Stiles offers a new understanding of the legendaryoutlaw Jesse he has often been portrayed as a Robin Hood of theold west, in this ground-breaking work Stiles places James within the context ofthe bloody conflicts of the Civil War to reveal a much more complicated and significantfigure.

“Carries the reader scrupulously through James’s violent, violent life…. When [Stiles]… calls Jesse James the ‘last rebel of the Civil War; he correctly defines the theme that ruled Jesse’s life.” —Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove via The New Republic

Raised in a fiercely pro-slavery household in bitterly divided Missouri,at age sixteen James became a bushwhacker, one of the savage Confederate guerrillasthat terrorized the border the end of the war, James continued hiscampaign of robbery and murder into the brutal era of reconstruction, when his recklessdaring, his partisan pronouncements, and his alliance with the sympathetic editorJohn Newman Edwards placed him squarely at the forefront of the former Confederates’bid to recapture political power.

With meticulous research and vivid accounts ofthe dramatic adventures of the famous gunman, T. J. Stiles shows how he resemblesnot the apolitical hero of legend, but rather a figure ready to use violence to commandattention for a political cause—in many ways, a forerunner of the modern terrorist.