In this brilliant biography T. J. Stiles offers a new understanding of
the legendary outlaw Jesse James. Although he has often been portrayed
as a Robin Hood of the old west, in this ground-breaking work Stiles
places James within the context of the bloody conflicts of the Civil War
to reveal a much more complicated and significant figure.
Raised in a fiercely pro-slavery household in bitterly divided
Misssouri, at age sixteen James became a bushwhacker, one of the savage
Confederate guerrillas that terrorized the border states. After the end
of the war, James continued his campaign of robbery and murder into the
brutal era of reconstruction, when his reckless daring, his partisan
pronouncements, and his alliance with the sympathetic editor John Newman
Edwards placed him squarely at the forefront of the former Confederates'
bid to recapture political power. With meticulous research and vivid
accounts of the dramatic adventures of the famous gunman, T. J. Stiles
shows how he resembles not the apolitical hero of legend, but rather a
figure ready to use violence to command attention for a political
cause--in many ways, a forerunner of the modern terrorist.
