New Books Added to SASS Mercantile

For all you book lovers out there we have a new lineup of books in the SASS mercantile. Below is a description. I am sure you will find on that you will enjoy.

The Young Duke, The early life of John Wayne
by Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss, Hardcover, SKU# B00067-TYD, $22.95

By the time Stagecoach made John Wayne a silver-screen star in 1939, the thirty one year old was already a veteran of more than sixty films, having twirled six guns, tossed rope, busted broncos, and foiled cattle rustlers in B westerns for five different studios over the course of a dozen years. By the 1950s he was Hollywood’s most popular male actor-an Academy Award nominee destined to become an American Icon.
Through previously unpublished photographs and revealing family anecdotes, THE YOUNG DUKE tells how Marion Morrison became the legend known as John Wayne-from his boyhood in Winterset, Iowa, to his days as a college football star, to his stunning box-office success in Westerns and war movies in the 1930s and 1940s. Shedding new light on Wayne’s formative years and early Hollywood roles and influences, this biography reveals the true stories behind the screen legend’s public and private lives.


Rotgut Rustlers, Whiskey, Women, and Wild Times In The West
Edited by Erin Turner, Softcover, SKU# B00066-ROT, $16.95

Twenty-five true tales of a still-wild West from the late 1800’s to the mid 20th Century.
Rotgut Rustlers takes us on a fascinating tour of an often overlooked era of the West, a span of more than half a century from the late 1800s to the 1940s-from a period when vast reaches of the frontier were still lawless, into and beyond the Prohibition years, which were a boon not only to Chicago mobsters but to bootleggers from the Mississippi to the Pacific. IT brings together twenty-five true stories about the wild outlaws and wild towns of the West during these years-stories about bank and stagecoach robbers, cattle rustlers, smugglers, counterfeiters, gamblers, racketeers, bootleggers, and crooked politicians.


Wild Women & Tricky Ladies, Rodeo Cowgirls, Trick Riders, and Other Performing Women Who Made the West Wilder
By Jill Charlotte Stanford, Soft cover, SKU#B00065-TRK, $12.95

A richly illustrated, sassy look at rodeo cowgirls of the past and present.
Wild Women and Tricky Ladies celebrates the female trick riders and other performers who have been a part of Wild West shows, races, rodeos, and fairs since the 1800s right up to the present day. On the heels of her successful The Cowgirl’s Cookbook, cowgirl author Jill Charlotte Stanford showcases the lives and philosophies of the women of the rodeo arena.


Cowgirls, Stories of Trick riders, sharp shooters, and untamed Women
Edited by Erin Turner, SKU# B00064-CWG, $12.95

True Tales of a dozen women who helped tame the Wild West- and helped make America what it is today.
The fiercely independent, untamed women of the old West-the cowgirl-seems to most people a topic more of fiction than real fact. But the West was indeed populated with strong-willed women who worked and played as men did in the saddles of their favorite bucking broncos-women whose sacrifices, hard work, and can-do attitude helped build a nation. Cowgirls celebrates this previously overlooked aspect of the Western experience by bringing together their stories, including their own thoughts about being cowgirls.



Myths and Mysteries of the Old West
By Michael Rutter, softcover, SKU# B00063-MMW, $10.95

Fact versus Fiction in the Old West. In an age before twenty-four-hour news coverage, before law and order came into vogue, dime novels and casually written newspaper stories fueled the legends of the Old West. The real people who filled the vast Western landscape became the romantic folk heroes-or villains-of the era, among them Billy the Kid, George Armstrong Custer, and Sitting Bull. Myths and Mysteries of the Old West retells their tales with a witty brand of honesty about “truths” as elusive as vapors.
Were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid truly shot down in South America, or did they live to a ripe old age, with or without wild woman Etta Place? Did the Gold Rush really start with a fortuitous accident? Did Calamity Jane in fact marry and have a baby with Wild Bill Hickok, and did he really kill one hundred men? Did buffalo hunter Billy Dixon shoot a man dead from a mile away?
“We love a good story more than a slavish adherence to facts,”writes author Michael Rutter. “The sin, apparently, isn’t stretching the truth, but telling a bad story.”


Jesse James, The best writings on the Notorious Outlaw and His Gang
Edited by Harold Dellinger, Softcover, SKU# B000-62-JJB, $16.95

Jesse James. Hero or Villian? Robin Hood or Coldblooded Killer?
From his early days as a Civil War guerilla to his untimely death at the hands of “that dirty little coward” Robert Ford, few figures in American folklore have captured the imagination quite like Jesse James. In these pages, noted James authority Harold Dellinger sifts through the hundreds of published articles and book about James to painstakingly create a compelling collage of character, and extraordinary, multifaceted portrait fo one of history’s most infamous outlaws.


Billy the Kid, The Best Writings on the Infamous Outlaw
By Harold Dellinger, Softcover, SKU# B00061-BTK, $16.95

An essential compilation of the most captivating and historically important writings about one of American history’s most notorious badmen.
Since his death in 1881, Henry McCarty- aka William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid-has been the subject of thousands of published volumes, most of them unavailable to the general public. In movies, stage plays, short stories, novels, newspaper articles, poems, and songs, literally hundreds of authors have been drawn to explore his near mythical persona.
This collection makes the best of this work accessible. An artfully arranged anthology, Billy the Kid: The Best Writings on the Infamous Outlaw includes rare excerpts from the Kid’s canon. Together, these pieces of fiction, biography, and personal essay yield a compelling collage of character-and are an essential addition to the library of anyone interested in the myths and the realities of one of America’s most fascinating historical figures.


The Pony Express, An Illustrated History
By C.W. Guthrie with photographs by Bart Smith, softcover, SKU# B000-60-PE1, $19.95

A Celebration of the Sesquicentennial of the Short-lived, but Much Celebrated Pony Express.
“Orphans preferred” was the call that went out to the daring of heart when the Pony Express was organized in April 1860. Called “The Greatest Enterprise of Modern Times,” the endeavor recruited young men willing to risk life and limb in a relay race that crossed the frontier, speeding the delivery of mail to an astonishing ten days. For a brief time in American History- the nineteen months between April 1860 and November 1861-intrepid souls crossed nearly 2,000 miles of plains, deserts, and mountains on fast horses in less than half the time ever recorded for such a feat.
The Pony Express combines the legends and lore of this remarkable mail service with contemporary photography, archival images, and documents from the past, celebrating the 150th anniversary of those daring rides that ended with the completion of the transcontinental railroad.