Fast guns and hold-ups–the story of the James and Younger boys

The Wild West frontier of the United States of America is the place of modern legends, though their origins mostly come from a comparatively short period of time following the American Civil War during the westward expansion of ‘Manifest Destiny’ to the dawn of modernism in the late 19th century. Nevertheless, the names heroes and villains from this era immediately caught the public imagination, and have remained with us thanks to numerous books, films and television series’ featuring them. Among these outlaws, there were few more notorious than the James-Younger Gang. The gang hailed from Missouri, a bloody battleground with Kansas during the civil war, wracked by the deprivations of Union Jayhawkers and Confederate Bushwackers. It was from this latter partisan group that the James-Younger outlaw alliance grew. The end of the war brought hard times for these men, and the transition to gun-slinging, criminal killers seemed inevitable. The gang’s membership changed over the years, but its notable members were, of course, brothers Cole, Jim, John and Bob Younger and the James brothers, Frank and the infamous Jesse. The gang robbed trains, stagecoaches and banks in Missouri, Kentucky, Iowa, Texas, Kansas and West Virginia between 1868 and Jesse James’s death in 1882–when he was shot in the back by Robert Ford. This is the story of these violent men and their troubled times.

Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.