After a couple hours of banging on the first episode of the Mexican Revolution podcast series (ready to record this week) I was poking around the Interwebs and cut the trail of The Folklore Cycle by John Hood. I am utterly charmed. Hood, a former journalist, has crafted what he describes as a young adult crossover series of yarns that live at … [Read more...] about Folklore Fennario

By Rick Schwertfeger Captain, Frontier Partisans Southern Command “In The Guise of Manifest Destiny” Author Tim Robinson’s Manifest Destiny phrase in A Tropical Frontier: The Indian Fighter encapsulates it: Anglo-Americans saw dominance of the continent as their right and destiny. Through disease, subterfuge, and warfare, the Indigenous … [Read more...] about Into The Sawgrass

We have us a July 18 release date for Justified: City Primeval. Man, I’m looking forward to sitting down with Raylan Givens again. “Having left the hollers of Kentucky 15 years ago, Raylan Givens now lives in Miami, a walking anachronism balancing his life as a U.S. Marshal and part-time father of a 15-year-old girl. His hair is grayer, his hat is … [Read more...] about In The City Primeval

Ace scout Monk alerted me to the coming April 25 publication of Peter Cozzens’ A Brutal Reckoning, an account of the Creek War of 1813. Cozzens knows the period — he wrote a highly regarded dual biography of Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa aka the Shawnee Prophet. The Creek War was a seismic event. The powerful confederacy of the Muskogee … [Read more...] about A Brutal Reckoning

There are rumblings on the border... again... Politico reports: Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) introduced a bill seeking authorization for the use of military force to “put us at war with the cartels.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said he is open to sending U.S. troops into Mexico to target drug lords even without that … [Read more...] about Working The Trapline — Punitive Expeditions, Rednecks & Resisting Jackassery

Samuel K. Dolan scouted up this forthcoming tome on the man who took Joaquin Murietta’s head. Here’s the caper: Like some mysterious Paladin, Harry Love seemed to suddenly appear on the California landscape at a time when he was particularly needed. As captain of the California Rangers, Love pursued Joaquin Murrieta and his bandits, and the outlaw … [Read more...] about Working The Trapline — Longhunter & The Man From The Rio Grande

Guest post by Matthew Ilseman Comics have long been dominated by the superhero genre. The exception was the 1950s when they were dominated by the Western. By the 1990s, however, the Western was considered cliché. It was said they could not be made. So John Ostrander set out to write one along with his partners from Grimjack, Tim Truman and Tom … [Read more...] about Truth, Justice, and the American West — The Kents by John Ostrander, Tim Truman, and Tom Mandrake

Jack Carr is a cool dude. A NYT bestselling thriller writer, he’s got a gimmick to drive sales to indie bookstores. The last couple of books, he’s taken to bundling up a tranche of title pages, taking them to the range and shooting them with a specific firearm type that is featured in that novel. That an an autograph make for a limited edition … [Read more...] about Shot Through

John Jakes has gone up the trail. Jakes was a journeyman writer when he hit HUGE with The Kent Family Chronicles in the mid-1970s, timed fortuitously to take advantage of a spike in interest in heritage around the 1976 Bicentennial. The runaway bestseller status of the chunky, pulpy novels created a 20-year vogue for multi-generational … [Read more...] about Working The Trapline — Historical Sagas & Tales Of Terrorism

Thanks to a heads up from FP reader Brian Mack, I got an order in at the Fort Plain Museum for Tim Todish and Gary Zaboly’s new magnum opus on Rogers’ Rangers. By ordering through Fort Plain you can get a small discount and a portion of proceeds supports the museum. This book is magnificent — the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship and … [Read more...] about ‘Rogers Rangers’ & Victory At Bushy Run