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American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett
by Buddy Levy
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Berkley Trade (2006-12-05)
ISBN: 0425210081
EAN: 9780425210086
Dewy Decimal #: 920
Paperback: 352 pages
SKU: C008PAD
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Clean unmarked pages. Clean unmarked cover. Has some shelf wear. 100% satisfaction guaranteed. All orders include an e-Book about starting your own Internet Business in PDF format. FREE Domestic DELIVERY CONFIRMATION! We ship daily Mon-Sat and will let you know when your item has shipped along with your e/DC number. [HI, AK, PR, VI, GUAM, SAIPAN & West Coast customers, please use Expedited Shipping, otherwise it may take longer than the estimated 14 business days.] Items are from a smoke free and air conditioned environment.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
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.
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Customer Reviews
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A True American
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-12-14
I think the subject would have like the way the author writes this book. It shows David as a real person rather than the John Wayne characters in those movies. He was a real person and did not care what the folks in D.C. thought of him. His stand for the American Indians cost him his seat in Congress. This rest is History.
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Solid biography of an American legend
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-07-20
4 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
There are a number of great frontier figures who have excited the imagination over time--Kit Carson, Daniel Boone--and Davy Crockett. This book does a strong job of laying out Crockett's life, his accomplishments, his shortcomings, why he became (dare I use the term?) an iconic American figure.
His life began in 1786, in Tennessee. This was on the frontier, with the ever present threat of Indian attacks. Davy's family was not well off, and Davy had to hire out when he was only 12 years old to help support the family. He experienced a number of adventures with his many employments while he was still young. Early on, his life in servitude and at home was such that he just ran away from ho9me for awhile. The author wonders if this might not have been the genesis of his motto: "Be always sure you're right--then go ahead!" (Page 17 and elsewhere). He returned home when he was sixteen and worked to help his family. Before he was 20, he married Polly and began his own life.
The War of 1812 afforded him the opportunity to fight for his country, with General Andrew Jackson. After the war, he continued his wandering, always exploring, looking for new land. He displayed his hunting abilities far and wide and gained a reputation for it. He was always on the edge of debt--often falling in to debt. He had an entrepreneurial spirit, but--somehow--his projects never seemed to work out.
After Polly's death, he remarried and continued in a like vein. He began a political life--in the state legislature and then in the United States Congress. The book does a good job showing his dedication to his values--but his complete inability to work with others to forge compromises and move ahead. Some might give him high marks for not compromising. The end result, though, was ineffectiveness and the end of his political career.
With his family life falling apart because of his excessive absences and his inability to be a good provider, his life changed. When his acquaintance Sam Houston suggested he go to Texas to start over, Crockett found the idea irresistible. And we all know what happened from there. . .
What is good about this book is that it doesn't hide Crockett's blemishes (he seemed pretty self-centered, unable to work well with others when he was in disagreement, and seems to have had at least a flavor of ADHD, in that he seemed always to be moving around, never able to stand still). But he also made a genuine mark in American history. One of the most telling stories in the book is when he was invited to attend the opening of a play about himself. At the start, the actor and the myth and the fiction met the real person, in a strange duet. Levy says (Page 4): ". . .as Davy bows to the audience and takes his seat, he must understand that his present situation is unique--for the man, alive and in the flesh, has just met his own myth."
All in all, a useful biography of Davy Crockett.
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Authoritative on the Real Man
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-09-15
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is incredible. It hashes out the truth from the legend flawlessly, seamlessly. This is the perfect historical novel!
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The author's blind spot -- Davy Crockett, slavery, and santized history
Rating  (1)
Date: 2007-01-20
3 out of 28 customers found this reveiw helpful
I just saw the author talk about this book for nearly an hour on C-Span 2's Book TV. He says he researched and wrote and tried to get inside the mind and career of Crockett for three years, and he talked about him for 45 minutes without ever mentioning the fact of human slavery.
Crockett was a slaveholder, and may have also been a slave trader. In 45 minutes the author not only never mentions this, but never used the word "slave: or :slavery" nor even made indirect allusions to the topic, though it was at the center of American and Southern economic and political life during Crockett's career. It was common back then for folks down on their luck to purchase some slaves in the East, rope them neck to neck and walk them to Mississippi or Arkansas, when that was the frontier, or in Crockett's heyday, to Texas, where they would sell for three times the value they brought at the point of purchase. Did that have something to do with Crockett's trek to Texas? Did he bring any with him? We'll never know from Buddy Levy.
The secession of Texas from Mexico was largely about the fact that white Texians, as they called themselves, demanded the legalization of slavery, and the right to legally hunt down and return escapees from Arkansas and Louisiana. On Book TV, Levy talked for forty five minutes, at great length about the secession of Texas and the political climate and happenings there at the time of Crockett's death. He spent a few minuted detailing the career of Mexican president Santa Ana too, recounting how the white settlers regarded him as a dictator, but never mentioned the dictatorial act which displeased them the most -------- his refusal to allow slavery in Texas.
At the time of the Alamo, one in five "Texians" were slaves. Make no mistake, despite the author's apparently sanitized version of the history --- that's what Crockett and others died at the Alamo for. Human slavery.
Based upon his Book TV show and the author's evident big blind spot, if I see his work in a library or bookstore I'll pick it up and look in the index to see if slavery gets mentioned, if there is an index at all. But I would never buy it, and wouldn't recommend it.
Bruce Dixon
Marietta GA
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Terrific read!
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-12-06
4 out of 8 customers found this reveiw helpful
***** David "Davy" Crockett was, is, and always will be one of America's greatest people. Anyone interested in knowing about his legendary life will be enthralled with this biography.
Chapters include:
Prologue
Origins
Runaway
The Dutiful Son Becomes a Man
"My Dander Was Up"
"Mounted Gunman"
Trials on the Homefront
"The Gentleman from the Cane"
"Neck or Nothing"
Political Reality
Crockett's Declaration of Independence
"Nimrod Wildfire" & "The Lion of the West"
A Bestseller & a Book Tour
"That Fickle, Flirting Goddess" Fame
Lone Star on the Horizon
"Victory or Death"
Smoke from a Funeral Pyre
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Sprinkled throughout the entire book are spectacular illustrations; giving life to this fascinating man's history. *****
Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.
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