-
Read MoreAbout Paul
I’ve been writing about the history of the American Southwest for a dozen years, specifically efforts to secure law, order, and justice along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands during times of economic dislocation, political corruption, and criminal violence. My first book, Salt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande, relates how the corruption of law and politics and the legal theft of economic resources in El Paso led Tejano citizen soldiers to take up arms against Texas Rangers, Buffalo Soldiers, and a posse of outlaws and mercenaries. Salt Warriors won the Robert A. Calvert Book Prize (2007) and was named a Southwest Book of the Year for 2008. While digging through the archives at the Arizona Historical Society, I came across newspaper accounts of an extraordinary crime, the kidnapping of June Robles of Tucson in 1934. That story led me to the wider history of the FBI’s War on Kidnapping, an element of FDR’s 1930s War on Crime, waged by the Justice Department’s Attorney General Homer S. Cummings and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. In Public Enemies, Bryan Burrough’s fast-paced masterpiece on the War on Crime, the author brings to life the early FBI’s 1930s war on the violent bank robbers and ransom kidnappers. He focuses on Hoover’s campaign to end the bloody careers of Dillinger, Nelson, Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, Kelly, and the Barker-Karpis gang. While Burrough touches on ransom kidnappings, he necessarily leaves out the wave of child kidnappings that took place in the 1930s. My current project focuses on the early FBI’s efforts to end ransom kidnappings, the dedication to duty of Hoover’s special agents in the field, the “G-men,” and the price of failure when a crime can’t be solved. The unsolved 1934 kidnapping of June Robles is the vehicle for telling that story. My first blog posts provided some background, dealing with major crimes that occurred before the so-called “Crime of the Century,” the Lindbergh baby kidnap/murder that led to federal legislation and FBI involvement. The book project is tentatively titled, The Girl in the Iron Box: Devotion to Duty & the Price of Failure in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. The website also contains some photos my father took of fellow flyers in the famous 19th Bombardment Group and an article on Wyatt Earp’s nemesis, Curly Bill Brocius. Enjoy. I look forward to your...
-
Read MoreSalt Warriors
Winner of the 2007 Robert A. Calvert Book Prize Winner of a Southwest Book Award for 2008, Border Regional Library Association Honorable Mention, 2009 Tejano Book Prize, Tejano Genealogy Society of Austin Finalist for 2009 Wild West History Association Book Award Published by Texas A&M University Press, 2008 “The author elegantly navigates the shaky alliances, the deep enmities, the hubris of some and the courage of others in the struggle over control and use of the salt lakes near El Paso. The Salt War ranks with the Lincoln County War in its drama and complexity, and in its evidence of a troubled American past with issues that reverberate into the 21st century. This is an authoritative and important work by a gifted scholar.” —Paula Mitchell Marks, author of To Die in the West “No previous work on the Salt War has mined such a quarry of primary sources, explicated the political power plays (involving both Tejanos and Anglos) in the conflict with such clarity, interpreted the insurgency of those relying on the salt lakes so incisively, and chronicled the aftermath that the episode had on the common people of the El Paso Valley so skillfully. The book is destined to become the definitive treatment of the subject.” —Arnoldo De León, author of Mexican-Americans in Texas: A Brief History “… an exceptionally well researched piece of scholarship that goes way beyond what has previously been written. It is obvious from the first page that Cool has made great efforts to uncover every piece of evidence that might in any way shed any new facts on his dramatic but bloody event.” —Jerry Thompson, author of Cortina: Civil War to the Bloody End “The so-called El Paso Salt War of 1877 undoubtedly ranks among th least known conflicts of the late 19th century. Paul Cool’s account is a fascinating study of an insurgency, with a cast of characters including laborers, land barons, corrupt politicians, lawmen of questionable backgrounds, the national press, the Texas governor, the Texas Rangers, President Rutherford B. Hayes, and last but not least, the United States Army. Among the civilian participants in this tragic events were Anglos, Mexican-Americans, and Mexicans. Many of the soldiers were African Americans…. The author unravels the incredibly tangled web of villains, heroes, and the not-so-heroic…. Salt Warriors is a well-researched and competently written work, with photographs of many participants, maps, and an extensive and useful bibliography. —Lt. Col. G. Alan Knight, US Army (ret.), in the Journal of American’s Military Past...
-
Read MoreCurrent Project: The Robles Kidnapping Investigation
At the height of the Depression-era War on Crime, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI G-men,Tucson and Pima County lawmen,and outraged citizens hunt the men who abducted a six-year-old child. The 1934 ransom kidnapping of June Robles created a nationwide sensation, rivaling the Lindbergh case in itstangled puzzle of mishandled evidence, disputed forensics, conflicting eyewitnesses, dodgy tipsters, large cast of suspicious characters, and media frenzy. When court records were sealed, the dramatic events were left to recycled newspaper articles, folk music, dramatic theater, and 75 years of rumor built upon rumor. Using newly discovered documents, Paul Cool will reveal the 3-year search for the truth behind a mysterious crime that once transfixed...
Most Recent Articles
Arizona History Convention, April 10-12, 2014 in Prescott
I’ll be chairing a great panel on Saturday morning, April 12, at this year’s Arizona History Convention, to be held at the Prescott Resort and Conference Center. The panel title is “Turning Lives into Legends: Wyatt Earp, Pearl Hart, and Curly Bill.” Each of our speakers will examine how it is that three memorable Arizona residents–one lawman and two criminals–did or did not pass from their allotted fifteen minutes of fame or notoriety to legendary or even iconic status. Our speakers (and their...
Read More
Capture of New Mexico’s Rustler King John Kinney in Wild West magazine
The April 2014 issue of Wild West magazine includes my article on the capture of John Kinney by New Mexico militia (the “Shakespeare Guards” under Captain James Black), orchestrated by federal government Customs Bureau agents. The article provides, for the first time, the inside story on the events that led the Shakespeare Guards to John Kinney’s location inside Arizona Territory as he attempted to escape justice. The narrative is drawn in part from a report prepared by Customs Special...
Read More
The books that introduced me to and hooked me on the Old West
Several blog entries ago, I credited Hollywood films and TV shows with spurring my interest in history. Oddly enough, although I probably watched more Western movies and TV shows than anything else in my youth, they did not kick start any particular desire to read about the Old West. Most, if not all the books I bought in my teens and twenties were by subscription or book club choices. It was not until my late 30s that I began...
Read More
The book that… first shaped my understanding of the American story …
Nathanael Greene, the general who George Washington increasingly relied upon as the Revolutionary War dragged on, described in correspondence his experience in the near-run campaign that turned the war’s tide: “We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.” The American Revolution is an incredible story, a historical thriller, if you will.
Read More
Favorite books read in 2013
Two can’t-put-it-down page-turners topped my list for 2013. The books were biographies of 1960s cultural icons> the one a rock band that changed the world, and the other a crafty if intellectually limited, self-absorbed, bloody-minded, puppet-master who epitomized that decade’s dark side. In both instances, the authors uncovered important new sources, stirring their stories into the well-known histories to paint fresh and highly revealing portraits and brilliantly analyzed assessments of their subjects and the worlds they inhabited. Strong writing...
Read MoreThe Books That… Introduced me to literature (Part 5)
One book not in my library is J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Never read the thing. It was never assigned in high school or college literature classes. My education was, as a result, entirely incomplete. I see now (from Wikipedia) that there is so much I never learned about literate whining. Catcher in the Rye was widely censored when I was in high school. Father Earl La Riviére, our 9th grade English instructor did push the envelope, as...
Read MoreThe Books That…(Part 4)
My first adult level history book, the one that led me to buy a thousand more, and to start writing.
Read MoreFollow Me On The Web
Categories
Archives
Author Recommendations
