The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire [Paperback]

Winner of the Ray Allen Billington Prize and the Phillis Wheatley Book Award Fascinating&dramatic. [A] titillating historical detective story. [E]legantly written&fascinating. [Jacoby] presents Ellis intriguing story&Equally intriguing is the history of the postCivil War Texas-Mexican borderland. Jacobys book may well have you searching his bibliography for books on that subject. A work of admirable sleuthing&Jacoby has assembled a portrait of a man who deliberately sought to cover his own tracks. Fascinating&[an] important slice of American history. An irresistible account of one of the great tricksters of his time, a fearless border and barrier-crosser, an artist of the great escape. A masterpiece of border history. Jacoby has a biographers eye for detail and a detectives talent for discovery, which he deftly uses to construct both the inner emotional life and larger social world of his subject. At once a history of the United States and of Mexico, William Ellis was a chameleon, a trickster, and a man determined to shape his own identity. With enormous skill, Karl Jacoby uncovers this tremendous subject, revealing Elliss lies, and crafting a powerful new narrative about the porous borders of class, race, and national identity in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American life. Deftly moving between the improbable details of Elliss biography and the larger political and cultural stories of the day, Jacoby demonstrates how one mans life can help us understand the past in an entirely new way. Like all of his remarkable scholarship, Karl JacobysUS