Jesse James The Best Writings on the Notorious Outlaw and His Gang Edited by Harold Dellinger
Jesse James, Hero or Villain? Robin Hood or Coldblooded Killer?
From his early days as a Civil War guerrila to his untimely death at the hands of "that dirty little coward" Robert Ford, few figures in American folklore have captured the imagination quite like Jesse James. In these pages, noted James authority Harold Dellinger sifts through the hundreds of published articles and books about James to painstakingly create a compelling collage of character, an extraordinary, multifaceted portrait of one of history's most infamous outlaws.
"Jesse James...has a face as smooth and innocent as the face of a school girl....Looking at his small white hands, with their long, tapering fingers, one would not imagine that with a revolver they were among the quickest and deadliest in all the West." -- John Newman Edwards, 1873 "When townspeople appeared at the house, Zee first maintained that the dead man was Thomas Howard, but she soon broke down and revealed that he was indeed Jesse James." -- William A. Settle Jr., 1966 "Outside my window about a quarter of a mile to the west there stands a little yellow house, with a green paling, and a crowd of people pulling it all down. It is the house of the great train-robber and murderer, Jesse James, who was shot by his pal last week." -- Oscar Wilde, 1882
Paperback, c2007, 258 p. : ill. ; 23 cm Includes bibliographical references (p.253-257)