American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett
by Buddy Levy
$25.95 Hardcover New (Note: Antique cover design) 

American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett
What most baby boomers know about the legendary frontier figure David "Davy" Crockett has been gleaned from the Walt Disney movie and television series starring Fess Parker. In American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett, WSU English professor Buddy Levy presents a fuller profile of the man who made Tennessee famous in the early 1800s. It's not just a master heroic outdoorsman who emerges; the consummate politician and ferocious fighter for underdog causes shines through as well.

Born August 17, 1786, Davy Crockett found his independent spirit and developed his frontier skills on the open road at the age of 14, when he ran away from home for two years. It was a scenario that repeated itself over the course of his lifetime, as Crockett went from adventure to adventure-on the rugged frontier, into the hallowed halls of the U.S. House of Representatives, and to his death at the Alamo on March 6, 1836.

This may be the definitive story of Crockett's life, more so than Crockett's own 1834 autobiography, in which he capitalized on his own pop-culture hero status rampant at the time. Levy has obviously researched every inch of Crockett's life but is careful he doesn't let myth overpower the truth, even though it's obvious Levy admires his subject.

Still, American Legend is not without its dramatic moments. Crockett's killing of a 600-pound black bear depicted on page 109 is as thrilling as any fictionalized adventure story.

What most historians will find interesting, though, is Levy's close study of Crockett's political prowess. Long before Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Crockett perfected the common-man affability that attracts votes. He learned early in his political career that it was better to tell an amusing tale than it was to be informative and boring. Despite the lack of substance in his speechmaking, once in office, he was a man of principle who took strong stands against Andrew Jackson's land reform and Indian removal policies. The political break with Jackson, who had commanded Crockett early in his military career during the Creek Indian War in 1813, led to Crockett's 1831 political defeat in his bid for a third term in the U.S. Congress. A later, unsuccessful try for political office sent Crockett down the road to fight for Texas's independence from Mexico.

Levy wrote American Legend using the purest biographer's ethics. He doesn't "recreate" conversations, and he backs up his story with extensive notes. Using his vast experience as an outdoor and travel writer for popular magazines, he weaves a story as exciting and interesting as the tale portrayed onscreen by Fess Parker.

From 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.)

From Booklist
Crockett was born in 1786 in Tennessee and died at the Alamo in 1836. In his brief lifetime, he became a folk hero, a three-time congressman, and a potential presidential contender. In this meticulously researched book, Levy chronicles Crockett's remarkable rise to fame. For most of the first half of his life, Crockett lived from day to day, driven by the barest necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. He married and then rented a small farm, and the couple had two sons and a daughter; his wife died from complications after their daughter's birth. He fought in the War of 1812 against Great Britain and later became a magistrate, the first step in his career in public life. In the end, as Levy has it, Crockett transcended the facts of his life to become an enduring symbol of possibility, remembered not for his deeds or his greatness, but for the tenacity of his spirit. George Cohen

Book overview
The new popular biography of one of America's most enduring symbols of the Old West. David Crockett was an adventurer, a pioneer, and a tragic hero who died at the Alamo. But the life of the real Crockett has been largely obscured and overshadowed by his mythology, turning this honest, unassuming backwoodsman into a larger-than-life, Disney-fied character in a coonskin cap. In his short but distinguished lifetime, Crockett became America's original celebrity, frequently written about in newspapers and becoming an integral part of the folklore of his day. Opportunistic and clever, and presciently media-savvy, Crockett parlayed his humble origins to his advantage, using his charismatic frontiersman persona to win elections as a three-time U.S. Congressman and even a nomination as presidential candidate. The 1834 publication of his memoir, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett-by Himself, one of the first autobiographies of its kind, went through seven printings, and sent Crockett on the first-ever book tour across the Eastern seaboard. At heart, Crockett was unassuming and down-to-earth, obstinate and independent to a fault. In a beautifully descriptive narrative, American Legend takes readers from Crockett's childhood hardships, near-death experiences, and meager education through his unlikely rise to Congress. Though his death at the Alamo on March 6, 1836, only added to his considerable fame and notoriety, the common David Crockett emerges here as never before: a rugged individual, an American original, and an enduring symbol of the American frontier.

Hardcover: 352 pages New
Publisher: Putnam Adult; First Edition (December 29, 2005)
ISBN-10: 0399152784 ISBN-13: 978-0399152788
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds