Train robbery: The birth, flowering, and decline of a notorious western enterprise

by Richard Patterson

Western Americana. In fine condition, clean and unmarked. Tightly bound. Edition not Stated but most likely a First.

239 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Richard Patterson is Professor of Philosophy at Emory University.

Reviews

[Ralph]

The author starts out by stating the obvious, that train robbers have something of a special niche in the annals of crime, that in many ways they have attained the stature of folk heroes in the American psyche, romanticized bot in the accounts of the period and in the fictions (prose, poetry and film) that followed. And then he proceeds to demonstrate, though their own words and actions, how they were no better than any other criminals, and worst than most. Beginning with the first train robbery after the War of Insurrection and carrying on through the twilight of the railroad bandits, Patterson traces both the evolution of the crime and the steps taken to combat it. He portrays the bad men, who most of the time were just desperate and colorless men who fell far short of the florid descriptions of the imaginative journalists of the time, and he shows us the manhunters, usually employed either by the railroads or the two fiercely competitive security agencies (Pinkertons and Well Fargo), who were often more ruthless than the men they hunted. This well written and thoroughly researched account has both notes and an index, a must for the researcher who wants to delve even further into the subject.