Davy Crockett: Man, Legend, Legacy, 1786-1986

Who was Davy Crockett? Was he really born on a mountaintop? Did he wear a coonskin cap? This collection of eight essays exposes both truth and fiction surrounding the legendary David Crockett. The essayists, including Charles K. Wolfe, Norman Bruce, and Catherine L. Albanese, chronicle Crockett's growth from an obscure backwoods hunter turned storytelling politician to the representative symbol of the American frontier in both its noble and its savage aspects. Together, the essays trace the development of Crockett's legend, his ability to manipulate it during his lifetime for political ends, and, after his death, its boundless expansion in the popular media of his day and ours. He grows to gigantic proportions, as the United States likewise expands, in the tall tales that dominate the Crockett almanacs, in melodramas of stage and screen, and in a Disney-inspired "Crockett craze." In all this, Crockett mirrors the range and diversity of the country that made him a hero and documents the ever-changing mental image we have of ourselves as a nation and as individuals. Illustrated with more than forty illustrations and carefully edited by Michael Lofaro, this collection examines the many facets of Crockett's life and legend and places them in a larger critical framework to highlight the inseparability of the two, revealing the huge effect this composite Crockett has come to have on American popular thought and culture.