David Crockett

Even as a pup, Davy Crockett "always delighted to be in the very thickest of danger." In his own inimitable style, he describes his earliest days in Tennessee, his two marriages, his career as an Indian fighter, his bear hunts, and his electioneering. His reputation as a b'ar hunter (he killed 105 in one season) sent him to Congress, and he was voted in and out as the price of cotton (and his relations with the Jacksonians) rose and fell. In 1834, when this autobiography appeared, Davy Crockett was already a folk hero with an eye on the White House. But a year later he would lose his seat in Congress and turn toward Texas and, ultimately, the Alamo.

Davy Crockett, the King of the Wild Frontier, is a man of legend. He is said to have killed his first bear when he was three years old. His smile alone killed another, and he skinned a bear by forcing him to run between two trees. Fact or fiction? Find out the real story of this folk hero, who did love to hunt bears, served as a congressman for Tennessee, and fought and died at the Alamo.

This easy-reading autobiography of bear hunting and Indian fighting — written in 1834, two years before Crockett met his fate at the Alamo — popularized tall tales of the frontier.

Davy Crockett has been America's best-known folk hero for at least 160 years. This informed biography by James Atkins Shackford first appeared in 1956, at the height of the television-inspired Crockett craze. As Michael Lofaro notes in his introduction, "Shackford faced the monumental task of rescuing a nearly unknown David Crockett from the obscurity caused by the popularity of the earlier legendary Davys and deepened by Disney." He succeeded memorably, restoring David Crockett of Tennessee, a true pioneer and colorful figure even without romantic trappings.

One of America's best-known folk heroes, Crockett served as a frontiersman, a scout, a soldier and a politician in the U.S. Congress. He died defending the Alamo, a steadfast citizen and heroic leader to the very end.

David Crockett was an adventurer, a pioneer, and a media-savvy national celebrity. In his short-but-distinguished lifetime, this charismatic frontiersman won three terms as a U.S. congressman and a presidential nomination. His 1834 memoir enjoyed frenzied sales and prompted the first-ever “official” book tour for its enormously popular author. Down-to-earth, heroic and independent to a fault, the real Crockett became lost in his own hype, and he’s been overshadowed by a larger-than-life, pop-culture character in a coonskin cap. Now, American Legend debunks the tall tales to reveal the fascinating truth of Crockett’s hardscrabble childhood, his near-death experiences, his unlikely rise to Congress, and the controversial last stand at the Alamo that mythologized him beyond recognition. In this beautifully written narrative, Crockett emerges as never before: a rugged individual, a true American original, and an enduring symbol of the Western frontier. “A great myth-busting story [that] presents Davy Crockett as a man of genius and folly, which has the unlikely effect of making him all the more heroic.”—Martin Dugard, author of The Last Voyage of Columbus and Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone “As spellbinding and dramatic as any novel and as compelling as any reportage.”—Peter Hoffer, Distinguished Research Professor of History, The University of Georgia

Perhaps no other figure in American history is more shrouded in myth and legend than David ("Davy") Crockett, the Tennessee frontiersman whose death at the Alamo in 1836 ensured his place in the Valhalla of American heroes. Crockett himself was responsible for much of the folklore about his life. A gregarious, fun-loving man, he was more than capable of spinning tall tales over a "horn" of liquor. The truth of his life, as William Groneman emphasizes in this book, was far more fascinating than the myth. David Crockett was a true self-made man who left home at the age of twelve. His adventures--hunting and exploring, serving as a soldier under Andrew Jackson in the Creek Indian War of 1813, a political career that took him to the United States Congress, an incessant search for "elbow room" that drew him to Texas-these were the real fabric of a heroic life. In writing of the "historical Crockett," Groneman, a world authority on the Alamo and its defenders, dispels the myths to uncover the genuine hero. He writes at length of the defense of the Alamo, describes how Crockett's reputation and heroism have been tainted by revisionist historians, and presents new evidence that the Tennessean actually left the Alamo during the siege to bring in reinforcements. Although safely outside the walls, he fought his way back in to rejoin his friends for the final, fatal, battle. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.