William Groneman III, '70 releases new book: "David Crockett: Hero of the Common Man"

William Groneman III, author of "David Crockett: Hero of the Common Man"

From Publishers Weekly 
In this new entry in the American Heroes series, Groneman wants to retrieve a "genuine American hero" from "the dense forests and misleading paths of revisionist history" surrounding him. Series editor Dale L. Walker notes that the Tennessean's image was fabricated by himself and others, "a mixture of tall tale and half-truth leavened by the occasional fact." The image of Crockett as an uncouth backwoods buffoon was spread in his own lifetime by a play featuring a character named Nimrod Wildfire inspired partly by Crockett, and later by folklore and Crockett almanacs. Wading through "rivers of myths" to present the historical figure, Groneman, a retired member of the New York City Fire Department who has written extensively about the Alamo and Crockett (Eyewitness to the Alamo), erases this image, unveiling a handsome portrait of "the Honorable David Crockett, husband, father, farmer, hunter, soldier, legislator, United States congressman, author, and genuine American hero." He tells how Crockett volunteered to fight in the War of 1812, displayed courage and resilience as a fighter and frontiersman, parlaying his good humor and lack of pretension into a political career. Groneman succeeds in re-establishing Crockett's reputation. Two concluding chapters are devoted to clarifying the controversy surrounding Crockett's death.
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From Booklist
As a writer, retired New York fireman Groneman has been an Alamo specialist, yet there is no hair-splitting or hyperbole in his life of the Alamo's best-known defender. He presents Crockett as a believable man of his time and place. A frontiersman born and bred, Crockett hired out to farmers and traders from age 12 on into his twenties, mastering hunting and the three Rs along the way. Optimism, fellow feeling, integrity, humor, and the gift of gab made his name locally and helped him into the U.S. House, where his fixation on legislation to help western squatters keep their land alienated him from Jackson Democrats. He shrank from nothing, it seems, including celebrity, resentment of which provoked character assassination by political opponents then and revisionist historians later. Groneman argues that Crockett is an important historical figure who was often authentically heroic. Ray Olson
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