American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett by Buddy Levy

Product Details

Synopsis

THE REAL KING OF THE WILD FRONTIER

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.

Publishers Weekly

Levy presents a sympathetic but unremarkable biography of the legendary frontiersman in colloquial if occasionally florid prose (an election loss "burned into Crockett like a brand searing a cow's flank"). Those whose image of Crockett was formed by the cultishly successful Disney treatment will find much that is familiar: the Indian fighter with Andrew Jackson, the congressmen from Tennessee and, finally, the Texas patriot who died defending the Alamo. But Levy (Echoes on Rimrock: In Pursuit of the Chukar Partridge) offers more (although not a lot more) in the way of background and complexity, and is willing to expose some of Crockett's deficiencies without making judgments: Crockett clearly indulged his wanderlust at the expense of his wife, a strong figure in her own right, and was, for a variety of reasons, an ineffective, bumbling politician. But despite his faults, readers will find Crockett likable and talented. In Levy's view, Crockett's abilities were expansive, and he opines that Crockett's bestselling 1834 autobiography "prefigures by some fifty years the literary genre of `realism,' with nothing remotely like it" until Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And Crockett's falling out with President Jackson over, in part, Jackson's brutal Indian Removal Act of 1830 is to the frontiersman's credit. B&w illus. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Biography

Buddy Levy is a journalist who has covered adventure sports and lifestyles around the world. He is assistant clinical professor of English at Washington State University.