"Stiles forcefully sets Jesse James in the context of his times, firmly identifying him as a violent and
effective Confederate partisan. Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War is so carefully researched, persuasive
and illuminating that it is likely to reshape permanently our understanding of its subject's life and times."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Among all the myth and folklore as well as the serious studies of Jesse James, this book stands out as the
best account of the meaning of his life and times. James was neither a Robin Hood figure nor a 'social bandit'
nor a 'primitive rebel' nor an emblem of rural America's last stand against capitalist transformation. Rather,
James and his associates were Confederate guerrillas who, in a Missouri torn by the Civil War, kept up their battle
against the victors for a decade after. For the first time, thanks to T. J. Stiles, we see the real Jesse James."
--James M. McPherson, author, Battle Cry of Freedom
"One of the most arresting and powerful biographies I have ever read. Few books profoundly change our understanding
of a famous figure in American history; this is one of them."
--Richard Maxwell Brown, editor, Violence in America
Publisher Web Site, March, 2004
Summary
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.
