"That Fiend in Hell" Ebook Tooltip Soapy Smith in Legend

Afbeeldingen

Inkijkexemplaar

Artikel vergelijken

  • Engels
  • E-book
  • 9780806188201
  • 28 september 2012
  • Adobe ePub
Alle productspecificaties
  • Je leest ebooks gemakkelijk op je Kobo e-reader, of op je smartphone of tablet met de bol.com Kobo app. Let op! Ebooks kunnen niet geannuleerd of geretourneerd worden.

Samenvatting

As the Klondike gold rush peaked in spring 1898, adventurers and gamblers rubbed shoulders with town-builders and gold-panners in Skagway, Alaska. The flow of riches lured confidence men, too—among them Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith (1860–98), who with an entourage of “bunco-men” conned and robbed the stampeders. Soapy, though, a common enough criminal, would go down in legend as the Robin Hood of Alaska, the “uncrowned king of Skagway,” remembered for his charm and generosity, even for calming a lynch mob. When the Fourth of July was celebrated in ’98, he supposedly led the parade. Then, a few days later, he was dead, killed in a shootout over a card game.

With Smith’s death, Skagway rid itself of crime forever. Or at least, so the story goes. Journalists immediately cast him as a martyr whose death redeemed a violent town. In fact, he was just a petty criminal and card shark, as Catherine Holder Spude proves definitively in “That Fiend in Hell”: Soapy Smith in Legend, a tour de force of historical debunking that documents Smith’s elevation to western hero. In sorting out the facts about this man and his death from fiction, Spude concludes that the actual Soapy was not the legendary “boss of Skagway,” nor was he killed by Frank Reid, as early historians supposed. She shows that even eyewitnesses who knew the truth later changed their stories to fit the myth.

But why? Tracking down some hundred retellings of the Soapy Smith story, Spude traces the efforts of Skagway’s boosters to reinforce a morality tale at the expense of a complex story of town-building and government formation. The idea that Smith’s death had made a lawless town safe served Skagway’s economic interests. Spude’s engaging deconstruction of Soapy’s story models deep research and skepticism crucial to understanding the history of the American frontier.

Productspecificaties

Inhoud

Taal
en
Bindwijze
E-book
Oorspronkelijke releasedatum
28 september 2012
Ebook Formaat
Adobe ePub
Illustraties
Nee

Betrokkenen

Lees mogelijkheden

Lees dit ebook op
Android (smartphone en tablet) | Kobo e-reader | Desktop (Mac en Windows) | iOS (smartphone en tablet) | Windows (smartphone en tablet)

Overige kenmerken

Studieboek
Nee

EAN

EAN
9780806188201
Nog geen reviews

Waarom een wereldbollabel?

Artikelen met een wereldbol bezitten positieve eigenschappen vergeleken met soortgelijke artikelen, zoals bepaalde keur- of kenmerken op sociaal en ecologisch gebied.

Keur- of kenmerken

  • Digitaal boek
Lees meer over ons wereldbollabel

Kies gewenste uitvoering

Prijsinformatie en bestellen

De prijs van dit product is 17 euro en 99 cent.
Direct beschikbaar
Verkoop door bol
  • E-book is direct beschikbaar na aankoop
  • E-books lezen is voordelig
  • Dag en nacht klantenservice
  • Veilig betalen
Houd er rekening mee dat je downloadartikelen niet kunt annuleren of retourneren. Bij nog niet verschenen producten kun je tot de verschijningsdatum annuleren.
Zie ook de retourvoorwaarden

Lijst met gekozen artikelen om te vergelijken

Vergelijk artikelen