It may surprise some of you that James Ellroy’s American Tabloid is one of my all-time favorite novels. After all, it’s not a frontier tale... except, it kinda is. Allow me to explain. For starters, the era it covers — the late 1950s up to November 22, 1963 — was an era obsessed with the frontier. Every kid of the era had a coonskin cap and … [Read more...] about The Cold War Frontier

It’s a ways away from hitting screens, but South Africa is poised to give us what appears to be an epic retelling of the rise of Shaka, who mobilized the Zulu people into the most potent military force in southern Africa in the early 19th century. From Tagged Online: The epoch-making Shaka Ilembe is poised to set records as the most expensive … [Read more...] about Shaka Ilembe

Part I of the Frontier Partisans Podcast exploring the remarkable American life of Simon Girty is up. You can access it here. Girty was an ace Frontier Partisan — and, for most of the past couple of centuries, the most hated and reviled man in American frontier history. Simon Girty and his brothers James and George — who had all been captured … [Read more...] about Simon Girty Podcast

Today, April 16, 2021, marks the 275th anniversary of the Battle of Culloden Moor, where the last great Jacobite uprising was crushed in a mighty slaughter of the warriors of the Highland Clans. Their defeat there at the hands of the Duke of Cumberland marked the end of the movement to restore the Stuart dynasty to the British throne, a movement … [Read more...] about Ghosts Of Culloden

One of the wildest tales in Frontier Partisan history is getting what appears to be a rather lush screen treatment: Edge of the World, featuring the remarkable Jonathan Rhys Myers as pirate-smashing, empire-defying James Brooke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2AK04A3HJw The adventures of Sir James Brooke, who defied the British Empire to rule … [Read more...] about Working The Trapline On The Edge Of The World

I gave it my best shot. Truly. All four hours of Raoul Peck’s sprawling HBO documentary Exterminate All The Brutes. It is, as I expected, a full-throated indictment of Western Civilization. If you are inclined to believe that the “settler-colonialism” of the West is fundamentally genocidal and evil — and that that is pretty much all Western … [Read more...] about Indicting Western Civilization

Never pick up the knife magazines. This is a rule at Fort Frontier Partisans, and I done went and broke it. Now I want the new TOPS Storm Vector (Modern) Seax. I don’t need a seax. I don’t need a seax.  I don’t need a seax... If you would have been around from, oh say 793 – 1066 AD, the Seax would have been just as much a part of you as cell … [Read more...] about Working The Trapline — Something Seaxy

Stumbled across a Howard Terpning that I’d never seen before. I love his scenes depicting the intertribal warfare of the Northern Plains and Rockies in the early 19th century. Warfare among the Blackfoot, the Crows and the Lakota, among others, was endemic — and so culturally important that it remained their primary focus even in the face of the … [Read more...] about ‘Capturing The Chief’s Coat’

The creative tornado that is Taylor Sheridan has touched down again — in flames this time. The trailer for Those Who Wish Me Dead popped up in my Youtube feed today (with the soundtrack for Black Sails, which, yes, I DO listen to every day; what of it?). I paused in my Frontier Partisan Biathlon to … [Read more...] about You Can Run On For A Long Time