Jesse James
Last Rebel of the Civil War
Not a Robin Hood but a Confederate insurgent who never accepted the war had ended.
T.J. Stiles argues that Jesse James was not a social bandit but a Confederate guerrilla who never conceded defeat, robbing banks as continued political warfare and courting a partisan press that printed his letters. The book places him inside Missouri’s postwar politics rather than in western folklore, and it won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Stiles later won the Pulitzer for his Vanderbilt biography.
Recommended by 1 Person
Bryan Burrough
In fact, it may be the single best biography of an American criminal I've read. It brings an enveloping academic rigor and a propulsive drive to a field of study that too often lacks both.
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