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Tom Clavin

Biography

Tom Clavin

Tom Clavin is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and has worked as a newspaper editor, magazine writer, TV and radio commentator, and a reporter for The New York Times. He has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, and National Newspaper Association. His books include the bestselling Frontier Lawmen trilogy --- WILD BILL, DODGE CITY and TOMBSTONE --- and BLOOD AND TREASURE with Bob Drury. He lives in Sag Harbor, NY.

Tom Clavin

Books by Tom Clavin

by Phil Keith with Tom Clavin - History, Nonfiction

On June 19, 1864, just off the coast of France, one of the most dramatic naval battles in history took place. On a clear day with windswept skies, the dreaded Confederate raider Alabama faced the Union warship Kearsarge in an all-or-nothing fight to the finish, the outcome of which would effectively end the threat of the Confederacy on the high seas. Authors Phil Keith and Tom Clavin introduce some of the crucial but historically overlooked players, including John Winslow, captain of the USS Kearsarge, as well as Raphael Semmes, captain of the CSS Alabama. Winslow pursued Semmes in a spectacular 14-month chase over international waters, culminating in what would become the climactic sea battle of the Civil War.

by Tom Clavin - History, Nonfiction

In turbulent 1870s Texas, the revered and fearless Ranger Leander McNelly led his men in one dramatic campaign after another, throwing cattle thieves, desperadoes, border ruffians and other dangerous criminals into jail or (if that's how they wanted it) six feet under. They would stop at nothing in pursuit of justice, even sending 26 Rangers across the border to retrieve stolen cattle --- taking on hundreds of Mexican troops with nothing but their Sharps rifles and six-guns. The nation came to call them “McNelly’s Rangers.” Set against the backdrop of 200 years of thrilling Texas Rangers history, FOLLOW ME TO HELL takes readers into the tough life along the Texas border that was tamed by a courageous yet doomed captain and his team of fearless men.

by Tom Clavin - History, Nonfiction

The dreaded Dalton Gang consisted of three brothers and their rotating cast of colorful accomplices who saw themselves as descended from the legendary James brothers. They soon became legends themselves, beginning their career as common horse thieves before graduating to robbing banks and trains. On October 5, 1892, the Dalton Gang attempted their boldest and bloodiest raid yet: robbing two banks in broad daylight in Coffeyville, Kansas, simultaneously. For the first time ever, the full story of the Dalton Gang's life of crime, culminating in one of the Wild West’s most violent events, are chronicled in detail --- a last gruesome gasp of the age of gunfights.

by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin - History, Nonfiction

They were known as “Rudder’s Rangers,” the most elite and experienced attack unit in the United States Army. In December 1944, Lt. Col. James Rudder's 2nd Battalion would form the spearhead into Germany, taking the war into Hitler’s homeland at last. In the process, Rudder was given two objectives: Take Hill 400…and hold the hill by any means possible. To the last man, if necessary. The battle-hardened battalion had no idea that several Wehrmacht regiments, who greatly outnumbered the Rangers, had been given the exact same orders. The clash of the two determined forces was one of the bloodiest and most costly encounters of World War II.

by Tom Clavin - History, Nonfiction

On August 13, 1944, Joe Moser set off on his 44th combat mission over occupied France. Soon, he would join almost 170 other Allied airmen as prisoners in Buchenwald, one of the most notorious and deadly of Nazi concentration camps. Tom Clavin's LIGHTNING DOWN tells this largely untold and riveting true story. Moser was just 22 years old, a farm boy from Washington State who fell in love with flying. During the War he realized his dream of piloting a P-38 Lightning, one of the most effective weapons the Army Air Corps had against the powerful German Luftwaffe. But on that hot August morning, he had to bail out of his damaged, burning plane. Captured immediately, Moser’s journey into hell began.

by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin - Biography, History, Nonfiction

It is the mid-18th century, and in the 13 colonies founded by Great Britain, anxious colonists desperate to conquer and settle North America’s “First Frontier” beyond the Appalachian Mountains commence a series of bloody battles. These violent conflicts are waged against the Native American tribes whose lands they covet, the French, and finally against the mother country itself in an American Revolution destined to reverberate around the world. This is the setting of BLOOD AND TREASURE, and the guide to this epic narrative is America’s first and arguably greatest pathfinder, Daniel Boone --- the Revolutionary War hero whose explorations into the forested frontier beyond the great mountains would become the stuff of legend.

by Tom Clavin - History, Nonfiction

On October 26, 1881, nine men clashed in what would be known as the most famous shootout in American frontier history. Thirty bullets were exchanged in 30 seconds, killing three men and wounding three others. Cattle rustlers had been terrorizing the back country of Mexico and selling the livestock they stole to corrupt ranchers. The Mexican government built forts along the border to try to thwart American outlaws. That October, tensions boiled over with Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne confronting the Tombstone marshal, Virgil Earp, and the suddenly deputized Wyatt and Morgan Earp and shotgun-toting Doc Holliday. Tom Clavin peers behind decades of legend surrounding the story of Tombstone to reveal the true story of the drama and violence that made it famous.

by Phil Keith with Tom Clavin - Biography, History, Nonfiction

Eugene Bullard lived one of the most fascinating lives of the 20th century. The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Bullard fled home at the age of 11 to escape the racial hostility of his Georgia community. When his journey led him to Europe, he garnered worldwide fame as a boxer, and later as the first African American fighter pilot in history. After the war, Bullard returned to Paris a celebrated hero. But little did he know that the dramatic, globe-spanning arc of his life had just begun. ALL BLOOD RUNS RED is the inspiring untold story of an American hero, a thought-provoking chronicle of the 20th century, and a portrait of a man who came from nothing and by his own courage, determination, gumption, intelligence and luck forged a legendary life.

by Tom Clavin - Biography, History, Nonfiction

In July 1865, "Wild Bill" Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt in Springfield, MO --- the first quick-draw duel on the frontier. Thus began the reputation that made him a marked man to every gunslinger in the Wild West. Even before his death, Wild Bill became a legend, with fiction sometimes supplanting fact in the stories that surfaced. The legend of Wild Bill has only grown since his death in 1876, when cowardly Jack McCall famously put a bullet through the back of his head during a card game. Bestselling author Tom Clavin has sifted through years of western lore to bring Hickock fully to life in this rip-roaring, spellbinding true story.

by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin - History, Nonfiction

In December 1777, some 12,000 members of America’s Continental Army stagger into a small Pennsylvania encampment near British-occupied Philadelphia. Their commander in chief, George Washington, is at the lowest ebb of his military career. Yet, somehow, Washington, with a dedicated coterie of advisers, sets out to breathe new life into his military force. Against all odds, they manage to turn a bobtail army of citizen soldiers into a professional fighting force that will change the world forever. VALLEY FORGE is the story of how that metamorphosis occurred. Bestselling authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin show us how this miracle was accomplished, despite thousands of American soldiers succumbing to disease, starvation and the elements.

by Tom Clavin - History, Nonfiction

The town that started as a small military site exploded with the coming of the railroad, cattle drives, eager miners, settlers and various entrepreneurs passing through to populate the expanding West. Before long, Dodge City’s streets were lined with saloons and brothels, and its populace was thick with gunmen, horse thieves and desperadoes of every sort. Enter Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. Young and largely self-trained men, the lawmen led the effort that established frontier justice and the rule of law in the American West, and did it in the wickedest place in the United States. Tom Clavin’s DODGE CITY tells the true story of their friendship, romances, gunfights and adventures.

by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin - History, Nonfiction

From the authors of the New York Times bestselling THE HEART OF EVERYTHING THAT IS and HALSEY'S TYPHOON comes the dramatic, untold story of a daredevil bomber pilot and his misfit crew who fly their lone B-17 into the teeth of the Japanese Empire in 1943, engage in the longest dogfight in history, and change the momentum of the War in the Pacific --- but not without making the ultimate sacrifice.

by Tom Clavin - History, Nonfiction

From the racetracks of Seoul to the battlegrounds of the Korean War, Reckless was a horse whose strength, tenacity and relentless spirit made her a hero amongst a regiment of U.S. Marines fighting for their lives on the front lines. Tom Clavin, the bestselling co-author of THE HEART OF EVERYTHING THAT IS, tells the unlikely story of this racehorse who was beloved by the Marine Corps and decorated for bravery.

by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin - Biography, History, Nonfiction

The great Oglala Sioux chief Red Cloud was the only Plains Indian to defeat the United States Army in a war, forcing the American government to sue for peace in a conflict named for him. At the peak of their chief’s powers, the Sioux could claim control of one-fifth of the contiguous United States. But unlike Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, or Geronimo, the fog of history has left Red Cloud strangely obscured. Now his incredible story can finally be told.

by Tom Clavin - Biography, Nonfiction, Sports

Acclaimed sportswriter Tom Clavin reveals the untold Great American Story of three brothers, Joltin’ Joe, Dom and Vince DiMaggio, and the Great American Game --- baseball --- that would consume their lives. A vivid portrait of a family and the ways in which their shifting fortunes and status shaped their relationships, THE DIMAGGIOS is an exploration of an era and a culture.

by Tom Clavin and Danny Peary - Biography, Nonfiction, Sports

ROGER MARIS may be the greatest ballplayer no one really knows. In 1961, the soft-spoken man from the frozen plains of North Dakota enjoyed one of the most amazing seasons in baseball history, when he outslugged his teammate Mickey Mantle to become the game’s natural home-run king. It was Mantle himself who said, "Roger was as good a man and as good a ballplayer as there ever was." Yet Maris was vilified by fans and the press and has never received his due from biographers --- until now.