Christopher Corbett, professor of the practice of English, recently reviewed a new book about Davy Crockett for the Washington Post. In “Born on a Mountaintop,” author Bob Thompson visits sites associated with Crockett to discover the man behind the legend.
Corbett, who is the author of “Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express” and “The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the Wild West,” used his own knowledge of the West’s legends to evaluate the book.
“[Thompson’s] book also shows a fine appreciation of the truth, half-truth and no truth at all that connoisseurs of the West understand and accept. Crockett’s story is part of that world. A hell of a lot of it might not be true,” Corbett writes. “I stopped worrying about what was true on Page 13, and it made for a more pleasant read, too.”
The full review, “‘Born on a Mountaintop: On the Road with Davy Crockett and the Ghosts of the Wild Frontier’ by Bob Thompson,” appeared on March 22.
