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Title: Jesse James : Last Rebel of the Civil War by T.J. Stiles ISBN: 0-375-40583-6 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.29 (34 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Violentization?
Comment: JESSE JAMES, LAST REBEL OF THE CIVIL WAR takes its subject seriously. There are sixty-nine pages of footnotes, sixteen pages of bibliography.
This is not your conventional biography. Stiles theorizes that James was not the Robin Hood kind of brigand, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, he's been made out to be by innumerable Hollywood movies and TV shows. Rather he was a product of the bushwacker guerrillas who ravaged Missouri during the Civil War and he kept at it right up until his death in 1882. Stiles also maintains that James was a political outlaw in that part of his purpose was to unseat the Radical Republicans who governed Missouri after the Civil War. Stiles equates James to the modern terrorist.
Quite a bit of the book is devoted to Jesse's relationship with John Newman Edwards, a newspaper editor and "voice of the Confederate wing of the Democratic Party in Missouri." Edwards extolled the James gang as rebel heroes, compares them to "men who might have sat with Arthur at the Round Table, ridden at tourney with Sir Launcelot or worn the colors of Guinevere." He also edited and published Jesse's letters ridiculing the Radical Republicans and President Grant.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that this is a dull history book. The gang's tangles with the Pinkertons and their Northfield make entertaining reading. The book also fills in some gaps. For instance, there's no doubt Jesse was a murderer. He was involved in a mass execution of union troops during the days he spent riding with Bloody Bill Anderson. These guerrillas defiled the bodies of their victims and took scalps. There's little doubt that Jesse murdered John W. Sheets during a bank robbery as well as the cashier during the Northfield raid and the conductor and two passengers during a train holdup; he even murdered one of the gang members, Ed Miller, Clell Miller's brother. Stiles relates a theory about how Jesse got that way called "violentization." According to sociologist Lonnie Athens, there are four stages: brutalization; belligerency; violent performances "during which the subject pushes through a psychological barrier, and actually inflicts pain on another person"; and virulency, where others fear and applaud the violence. All of these steps fit Jesse like a glove.
The ending of the book is rather disappointing and anti-climactic. Stiles's description of Bob and Charlie Ford's murder
adds nothing new. The final chapter,"Apotheosis," examines various scholarly takes on the James gang. This gives Stiles another chance to belittle any romantic notions about the outlaws that remain. Stiles spends half of a page telling us what happened to the surviving principals. Frank never spent a day in jail and he and Cole Younger died in bed.
Rating: 5
Summary: Read it for yourself...
Comment: I have just finished a careful reading of this book, and it is one of the most remarkable books on American history I have ever read. Instead of being simply a compilation of facts and speculations about someone who lived underground for his entire life, this beautifully written book is a sweeping story of how the United States went through the Civil War and the years that followed. The author knits together the lives of one remarkable person after another, including Jesse and Frank James, their larger-than-life mother, Zerelda, the outlaws' friends and enemies (such as John Edwards and Allan Pinkerton), together with the story of the community the James family belonged to, as it was torn apart during the war. The most astonishing thing this book reveals is how important Jesse James was in the politics of his times, and how he understood that and tried to use his fame to promote the Confederate cause.
I frankly don't understand the angry reviews that some have posted on Amazon. This is a very careful, thoughtful book, with almost 100 pages of endnotes (and bibliography) that explain the author's reasoning as well as sources. Clearly he's telling us what he thinks, but he never goes overboard. So who gets to decide what an "error" is? Were they videotaping robberies, so we know exactly what happened? Some of the critics seem to think they have special, secret knowledge. One thing that is especially silly is that the people who are attacking Stiles's book go on and on about the fact that the endnotes mention Michael Bellesiles, a historian who is now the subject of an academic investigation. I was curious, and I checked: I found only a couple of mentions of Bellesiles in the notes, and they say things like, "Bellesiles's work has come under harsh criticism." One of the Amazon reviewers says things about Stiles's book that just aren't true (claiming that Stiles says there were few guns in Missouri before the Civil War, and only one man in three had a gun--none of that's in here). Then again, one man said he was basing his comments on a pre-publication proof, which is not the same thing as the actual book, and so the critics may have been too lazy to read the real thing.
This is a book worth reading. It is wonderful. I have never read a biography like it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Extraordinary American history
Comment: If more history books were written like this one, more Americans would know about their history. This is an exciting biography of a vicious American terrorist, of the same lineage as John Wilkes Booth and Tim McVeigh. Today it is more important than ever to understand how men like this develop and think, because there are more of them than ever, and their causes have surprisingly wide political support.
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