The Biography on Jesse James and his band of outlaws The Last Hurrah of The James-Younger Gang. Bye was a compelling story of the most famous outlaw in history. The story of Jesse James is a compelling one even though this particular book focused on the last adventure or hurrah Jesse and his gang embarked on. Even though there wasn’t a lot of description the action scenes were intense. This book proves the wild west was never completely tamed. Robert Barr Smith did a great job of making the book interesting but there wasn’t much about James’ life. The book was overall pretty good but what makes the most famous outlaw would have been an excellent addition.

The plot starts as Jesse James and the gang walk into which is suppose to be the biggest heist yet. The gang walks in to the bank and demands the money in the causal fashion only Jesse James possesses. The tension mounts as the author shifts over to the biography of the James Younger gang. Jesse’s child hood was shrouded in mystery until about the age of 15. The James brothers grew up on a farm in the Midwest before there criminal days Jesse and his brother both worked on the transcontinental rail road.

Both boys were master marksmen and excelled in horse riding. At the age of 15 Jesse’s father was killed and his mother was left to pay for the farm. Jesse and his brother decided instead of closing out the farm they would rob the bank that was about to claim the land. The plan worked the James brothers got the money and as an added bonus the owner of the bank was so scared by the robbery he closed the bank and took the rest of the money and moved. The James’ met up with the also skilled Younger brothers and became the most notorious outlaws in American history. Smith then takes the reader back to the bank scene and this is when the James Young Gang get blindsided by the people of the town.

I thought that this biography was an interesting account of the gang’s final robbery. There was fierce action and also liked how the author decided to split the scene with the biography of James’s life. The Bank robbery was action packed with a hale of gunfire in which two of the gang members are killed. The bank scene was well put together and fun to read. The actual biography on James’s life was also fun to read but read more like a chronology then a biography. What makes the world’s most famous outlaw? This question should have been answered. Smith did a good job of telling the reader how the James and Younger gangs met and how the robbed banks but noting on the politics of the group. Also Smith did made the greatest outlaws look like common thieves. The respect that should be there was not. Smith did not seem respect the James gang and therefore his biography of Jesse James was not what many fans of the James gang whould have liked to read. If you have a dislike of Jesse James but like a book with action I would recommend this book.

This Project was a biography read an account of the last days of the James Younger Gang labeled as a biography of Jesse James life. The story was good and the book overall was good but they biography wasn’t developed at all. Robert Barr Smith hasn’t written a biography but more in the way of a chronology. As a fan of Jesse James I was disappointed but I had a good time reading the book.