Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War by T.J. Stiles. Alfred A. Knopf. 510 pages. $27.50.

When the Jesse James gang held up a train in Gads Hill, Missouri in late January, 1874, it was mostly just another day at the office, except for one thing: they left behind a press release.

"The most daring robbery on record," read the release. "The south bound train on the Iron Mountain railroad was robbed here this morning by five heavily armed men, and robbed of ________ dollars." Prepared well in advance, and possibly written by Jesse himself, who enjoyed bragging about his exploits in letters to the editor, the release described the robbery that had just occurred down to the last detail. The final take would be around $2,000, and the press reception was all they could have hoped for. Like terrorist groups a century later, they knew the true value of bad publicity: it not only lets enemies know you are alive and well, but it boosts the morale of supporters, and there were plenty. While some newspapers decried the theft, a good many others said "Go for it."

Jesse James is known today mainly as one more colorful Wild West robber, but as T.J. Stiles shows in this exceptional new biography, he and his older brother Frank — one a shoot-first extrovert, the other bookish and soft-spoken; both cold-blooded — were also heroes of a decidedly zealous breed, with a p.r. machine to match. Across their hotly-divided home state of Missouri and throughout Reconstruction South, they were seen as Robin Hoods, "robber bandits" who not only defended the values (such as they were) of the Confederacy but who waged war on behalf of the independent farmer by attacking railroads and banks, the bloodlines of encroaching commerce. Like the men who trained them — white supremacist bushwhackers like William Quantrill and "Bloody Bill" Anderson — they were horsemen of the Southern apocalypse, waging war with the Lincolns, Grants, Radicals, Federalists, abolitionists and ex-slaves who were trying to change their way of life. Once a powerful Confederate editor took their side, they would also become legends.

Jesse learned his role early, growing up in the very thick of tensions that would erupt in war. Missouri was the epitome of a land half-slave and half-free; by 1861, a secessionist governor and Unionist (if often slave-owning) populace gave the state two governments. Jesse's family, living in the violently anti-abolitionist stronghold of Clay County on the state's western border, were middle-class farmers who had prospered from slavery; the cheapest possible form of labor and the driving force behind the Southern economy. His father, a charismatic Baptist preacher and hemp farmer, would join the pro-slavery dissenters who formed the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845; his mother, Zerelda, was a vindictive, flinty shrew who would encourage her boys in their massacres and — like many Southern families — would keep a standard retinue of slaves long after Lincoln had freed them.