The Great Western Land Pirate


Book Description

John A. Murrell lived in Tennessee when Andrew Jackson was president. According to legend, he was an able man who had been raised to be a rascal by his unscrupulous mother. Flogged and imprisoned as a youth, he swore eternal vengeance against the society that had punished him. He became a highwayman and merciless killer, a horse thief, counterfeiter, and slave stealer. He often disguised himself as a clergyman and preached to congregations while confederates stole their horses. He scattered counterfeit money like confetti. This research was undertaken in a skeptical spirit akin to that of Marshall many years ago. This book is about the legend and about what really happened, but only in a secondary sense is its purpose to set the record straight. How was an indifferent thief transformed into a master criminal?







60 WESTERNS: Cowboy Adventures, Yukon & Oregon Trail Tales, Famous Outlaws, Gold Rush Adventures


Book Description

This carefully edited ebook is a hand-picked collection of world's most admired Westerns in one volume: Riders of the Purple Sage (Zane Grey) The Rainbow Trail The Spirit of the Border The Untamed (Max Brand) The Night Horseman The Seventh Man The Virginian (Owen Wister) The Last of the Mohicans (James F. Cooper) The Prairie Chip, of the Flying U (B. M. Bower) The Flying U Ranch The Flying U's Last Stand Cabin Fever Rimrock Trail (J. Allan Dunn) The 'Breckinridge Elkins' Series (Robert E. Howard) The Last of the Plainsmen (Zane Grey) The Outcasts of Poker Flat (Bret Harte) The Wolf Hunters (James Oliver Curwood) The Gold Hunters The Border Legion The Country Beyond (Curwood) The Lone Star Ranger (Grey) Riders of the Silences (Brand) The Call of the Wild (Jack London) Heart of the West (O. Henry) White Fang (London) The Lure of the Dim Trails (Bower) The Luck of Roaring Camp (Harte) The Rustlers of Pecos County (Grey) O Pioneers! (Willa Cather) My Ántonia Roughing It (Mark Twain) The Log of a Cowboy (Andy Adams) The Two-Gun Man (Charles Alden Seltzer) The Law of the Land (Emerson Hough) The Short Cut (Jackson Gregory) Astoria (Washington Irving) The Valley of Silent Men (James Oliver Curwood) "Drag" Harlan (Charles Alden Seltzer) Whispering Smith (Frank H. Spearman) The Outlet (Andy Adams) Reed Anthony, Cowman A Texas Cow Boy (Charles Siringo) The Boss of the Lazy Y (Charles Alden Seltzer) The Golden Dream (R.M. Ballantyne) The Blue Hotel (Stephen Crane) The Long Shadow (B. M. Bower) The Girl from Montana (Grace Livingston Hill) The Hidden Children (Robert W. Chambers) The Way of an Indian (Frederic Remington) The Bridge of the Gods (Frederic Homer Balch) Where the Trail Divides (Will Lillibridge) The Desert Trail (Dane Coolidge) The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky (Stephen Crane) That Girl Montana (Marah Ellis Ryan) The Long Dim Trail (Forrestine C. Hooker) Hidden Water (Dane Coolidge) A Voice in the Wilderness (Grace Livingston Hill) ...




Beneath the American Renaissance


Book Description

The award-winning Beneath the American Renaissance is a classic work on American literature. It immeasurably broadens our knowledge of our most important literary period, as first identified by F.O. Matthiessen's American Renaissance. With its combination of sharp critical insight, engaging observation, and narrative drive, it represents the kind of masterful cultural history for which David Reynolds is known. Here the major works of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Dickinson receive striking, original readings set against the rich backdrop of contemporary popular writing. Now back in print, the volume includes a new foreword by historian Sean Wilentz that reveals the book's impact and influence. A magisterial work of criticism and cultural history, Beneath the American Renaissance will fascinate anyone interested in the genesis of America's most significant literary epoch and the iconic figures who defined it.




The Fatal Environment


Book Description

A two-time National Book Award finalist’s “ambitious and provocative” look at Custer’s Last Stand, capitalism, and the rise of the cowboys-and-Indians legend (The New York Review of Books). In The Fatal Environment, historian Richard Slotkin demonstrates how the myth of frontier expansion and subjugation of Native Americans helped justify the course of America’s rise to wealth and power. Using Custer’s Last Stand as a metaphor for what Americans feared might happen if the frontier should be closed and the “savage” element be permitted to dominate the “civilized,” Slotkin shows the emergence by 1890 of a mythos redefined to help Americans respond to the confusion and strife of industrialization and imperial expansion. “A clearly written, challenging and provocative work that should prove enormously valuable to serious students of American history.” —The New York Times “[An] arresting hypothesis.” —Henry Nash Smith, American Historical Review




History of Tennessee


Book Description







Symbols of Freedom


Book Description

"In the early United States, the language and symbols of American freedom inspired enslaved people and their allies to wage a real and revolutionary war against slavery"--




True Tales of Tennessee


Book Description

The Beginnings of the Volunteer State Tennessee was a remote place in 1810. By 1850, some of the most influential people in America had come from Tennessee, such as Sequoyah, David Crockett, the filibuster William Walker and the slave trader Isaac Franklin. Learn about the state's first steamboats and its initial telegraph message. Read newly discovered accounts from the Trail of Tears. Hop along the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad and relive the glory and tragedy. Author and columnist Bill Carey details these stories and more on early history in The Volunteer State.