Writer and Historian T.J. Stiles

• Winner of the Ambassador Book Award and the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography

Welcome to the online home of writer and historian T.J. Stiles. Over the course of 2008, this website will be gradually changing in anticipation of Stiles's forthcoming biography of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, the founder of the Vanderbilt dynasty. But you can still view all the extra features on Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, including background information that does not appear in the book itself, as well as reviews and essays.

From Train Robber to Robber Baron: An essay on the Vanderbilt page on the transition from writing about Jesse James to Cornelius Vanderbilt.

What's on this site?
Use the menu bar to go to specific pages, which contain the features detailed below.

Reviews & Awards:
1) Read extended excerpts from selected reviews of Jesse James.
2) See a list of the prizes awarded to Jesse James.

Sources:
1) Read extended excerpts from primary sources on which Jesse James was based. Currently posted are six items: an article about Jesse James saving a prisoner; an article about Jesse James dining out; two rare newspaper interviews with opponents of Jesse James: Adelbert Ames, and William Pinkerton of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency; and two articles from the New York Herald on the death of Archie Clement, Jesse James's brutal mentor during the Civil War.
2) Follow links to two archives of primary sources previously posted, including a series of sources describing the Lexington stage robbery of 1874 and its aftermath, and photos of Jesse James and his bushwhacker comrades.

Events/Bio:
1) Read a detailed biography of author T.J. Stiles.
2) Find out about his upcoming events.
3) Request an interview or author appearance.

Essays:
Read original essays by T.J. Stiles on . . .
1) an unheard warning of the Iraqi insurgency;
2) misdating a Jesse James photo;
3) new interpretations offered in Jesse James;
4) the structure and approach of the book;
5) tactics of the guerrilla war in Missouri;
6) newly discovered primary sources;
7) a review of the movie American Outlaws;
8) a review of other important books on Jesse James.

Vanderbilt:
Read about T.J. Stiles's forthcoming book: A biography of Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt, the original robber baron.

In Jesse James, historian T.J. Stiles offers a new understanding of the famous outlaw and the age he lived in. Stiles shows that Jesse James was far from the trivial action-hero of movies and legend. Rather, he was a highly political and significant figure in his own time, a man steeped in bloodshed who used his notoriety to promote the cause of former Confederates after the Civil War.

In removing James from the traditional frontier context, Stiles does much more than simply provide a few more details, or uncover a new source or two. Instead, he offers fresh interpretations of the world in which James lived: the slave-dependent riverside society of antebellum Missouri, the guerrilla conflict that wracked the state during the Civil War, and the political context in which Jesse James and his fellow outlaws won allies and enemies.

Deeply researched and far-reaching in scope, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War provides a vivid account of the dramatic adventures of this famous gunman, offering insights into the man himself that make him (as the New York Times Book Review says) "far more human, far more complex, and far less admirable."

In Jesse James's use of violence to command attention, Stiles writes, in his attempts to use his notoriety to effect political change, he resembles not the apolitical outlaw of legend, but rather a figure familiar to the modern age. In many ways, Jesse James was a forerunner of the modern terrorist.

Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War
by T.J. Stiles

Published in Paperback on October 28, 2003, by Vintage Books, New York, New York; List price: $16.00
ISBN: 0-375-70558-9

Published in Hardcover in September 2002 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, New York; List Price: $27.50
ISBN: 0-375-40583-6