Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

When the Atlantic seaboard was winning its Revolution against England, and the new West, undecided which camp to join, hung back, one mane stood out among the scattered handful of pioneers who were opening the great road to the plains... ...a stirring blend of biography, Americana, and history restoring in complete, human, authentic detail one of the most thrilling stories in our American past. In pages as exciting as an old dime novel, John Bakeless introduces to us all Daniel Boone-trapper, Indian fighter, contact to the forest people, surveyor of the Dark and Bloody Ground, law-giver to unruly frontier settlers, pathfinder, hunter... a figure already half-legendary in his own time. To explore the legend and recreate reality is John Bakeless's achievement in this unmatched adult biography of a man and an era. Drawing upon much hitherto unpublished material, he sorts fact and fancy to provide this documented portrait...and at the same time, a stirring chronicle that captures the spirit of these uniquely America,

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Even those well-read in the American Revolution are probably unaware of the extensive and often crucial espionage developed by both the British and Continental armies during the conflict. Besides reexamining in fresh perspective such well-known figures as Paul Revere, Nathan Hale, Benedict Arnold, and John Andre, the author, a former general staff intelligence officer in World War II, reveals the exploits and tribulations of scores of other spies: Ann Bates, the Tory agent who spied at Washington's headquarters and who, when fleeing for her life, paused to count American artillery; the high-ranking traitor Dr. Benjamin Church, the Continental Army's Director General of Hospitals, caught as a result of a careless mistress; Lydia Darragh, the Quaker housewife who spied for Washington himself; Sergeant Major John Champe, who posed as a deserter from the rebel army in order to capture Benedict Arnold; and many others. From the plot to kidnap George Washington to the fall of Yorktown, here are the clandestine activities of the spies, counterspies, and double agents who risked life and honor fighting a silent, anonymous shadow war.

In his introduction to this edition of "Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness," Michael A. Lofaro, a professor of English at the University of Tennessee and the author of "The Life and Adventures of Daniel Boone," assesses John Bakeless's achievement: "After fifty years his is still the standard by which all other biographies of the frontiersman are judged."