IFL American History Book Club: Last Hurrah of the James-Younger Gang by Robert Barr Smith
The IFL American History Book Club meets on the 4th Tuesday of each month to discuss their latest reading in American History. Hard copies of the title for checkout can be found on the Book Club Shelf on the first floor of the library.
This month we are reading: Last Hurrah of the James-Younger Gang by Robert Barr Smith (272 pp)
So small it had only one bank, so quiet no citizens carried guns. Hard-working, peaceful Northfield, Minnesota, was an orderly yet busy mill-town in the heart of prosperous farm country. On a serene autumn Tuesday in 1876, local shopkeepers, farmers, and citizenry went about their normal routines, little realizing that the infamous and deadly James-Younger gang had designs on tiny Northfield. The experienced robbers planned to target the single bank, which held the hard-earned money of the townsfolk. Jesse and Frank James and the Younger brothers had never experienced defeat. In Last Hurrah of the James-Younger Gang, Robert Barr Smith debunks the James-Younger "Robin Hood" image and shows that the real heroes of the Northfield raid were the ordinary people--the bankers who protected their depositors at their own risk, the townspeople who pitched in to chase the gang from town, and the posse members who pursued and triumphed over the retreating remnants of the gang.