The legendary Davy Crockett arose simultaneously with the emergence of the historical Crockett as a public figure, and once established, the man and the myth were forevermore entangled. The present work, his Life and Adventures (1833), ushered in a series of biographical and autobiographical books that thrust Crockett fully onto the national and international scene. This work, quickly retitled Sketches and Eccentricities, was the most outlandish. Its purported author, J. ...

Published from 1835 to 1856, the Crockett almanacs were the primary force in the creation of a tall tale Davy Crockett as our country’s first comic superman. In these rare almanacs, the historical Crockett became a fictional backwoods screamer who could “run faster,—jump higher,—squat lower,—dive deeper,—stay under longer,—and come out drier, than any man in the whole country.”As the best known of the early ring-tailed roarers, Davy also became an integral building block in the hum...

Although name such as Daniel Boone, Black Hawk, and “Davy” Crockett are familiar to most Americans, the historical, political, and literary contexts that produced the mythical images of these figures are unfamiliar to most outside academia.In Boone, Black Hawk, and Crockett in 1833, Michael A. Lofaro compiles, annotates, and analyzes three (auto)biographical writings published in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1833—The Biographical Memoir of Daniel Boone; Life of Ma-ka-...

The embodiment of the American hero, the man of action, the pathfinder, Daniel Boone represents the great adventure of his age—the westward movement of the American people. Daniel Boone: An American Life brings together over thirty years of research in an extraordinary biography of the quintessential pioneer. Based on primary sources, the book depicts Boone through the eyes of those who knew him and within the historical contexts of his eighty-six years. The story of Daniel Boone offers ne...

The 82nd Airborne Division spent more time in combat than any other American airborne unit of World War II, and its fierce battlefield tenacity earned it the reputation of one of the finest divisions in the world. Yet no comprehensive history of the 82nd during World War II exists today. The Sword of St. Michaelcorrects this significant gap in the literature, offering a lively narrative and thoroughly researched history of the famous division.Author Guy LoFaro, himself a d...

It’s difficult to overestimate the impact of the many new works by James Agee uncovered and published in the last twenty years. These previously unknown primary works have, in turn, encouraged a parallel explosion of critical evaluation and reevaluation by scholars, to which James Agee in Context is the latest contribution.This superb collection from well-known James Agee scholars features myriad approaches and contexts for understanding the author’s fiction, poetry, journ...

Drawn mainly from the centennial anniversary symposium on James Agee held at the University of Tennessee in the fall of 2009, the essays of Agee at 100 are as diverse in topic and purpose as is Agee’s work itself. Often devalued during his life by those who thought his breadth a hindrance to greatness, Agee’s achievements as a poet, novelist, journalist, essayist, critic, documentarian, and screenwriter are now more fully recognized. With its use of previously unknown and recently...

Barely noticed upon publication in 1941, writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans’s unique chronicle of Alabama sharecroppers, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, would enjoy a remarkable revival during the 1960s. Remembering it as a “bible of sorts” for civil rights activists like himself, psychiatrist Robert Coles called it “an eloquent testimony that others had cared, had gone forth to look and hear, and had come back to stand up and address their friends and neighbors and tho...