Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
Jesse James, Hardback Book

Jesse James Hardback

Hardback

Item not Available

Description

Traditionally, Jesse James has been portrayed as a Wild West bandit, a Robin Hood of sorts.

But in this meticulously researched, vividly written account of his life, James emerges as a far more significant figure: a ruthless, purposeful and intensely political man who used his crimes and notoriety to promote the Confederate cause during the bitter decade that followed Appomattox.

Raised in a fiercely pro-slavery atmosphere in bitterly divided Missouri, he began at 16 to fight alongside some of the most savage Confederate guerrillas.

In the bloodshed and bitterness that followed the Civil War, we see James and his fellow guerrillas, with their gunfights and holdups, become part of the intensely brutal struggle by the White South against the racial egalitarianism and Federal power fostered by Reconstruction.

We see how James placed himself squarely in this context with his thirst for attention, his partisan pronouncements and his alliance with a rising ex-Confederate newspaper editor who helped shape James's image for their common purpose.

In using violence and the news media on behalf of a political cause, Jesse James was neither a Robin Hood nor a quaint Wild West figure. Rather, as his life played out across the racial divide, the rise of the Klan, and the expansion of the railroads, he was a forerunner of what we have come to call a terrorist.

T.J. Stiles has written a memorable biography - a revelation of both the man and his time.

Information

Other Formats

Save 22%

£20.00

£15.45

Item not Available
Item not Available
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information