Skip to content
Scan a barcode
Scan
Hardcover The Life and Adventures of Nat Love: A True History of Slavery Days Book

ISBN: 1513208853

ISBN13: 9781513208855

The Life and Adventures of Nat Love: A True History of Slavery Days

Select Format

Select Condition ThriftBooks Help Icon

Recommended

Format: Hardcover

Condition: New

$11.93
Save $1.06!
List Price $12.99
50 Available
Ships within 2-3 days

Book Overview

The Life and Adventures of Nat Love (1907) is an autobiography by Nat Love. Written while Love was living in California, the text is an invaluable record of the wildness of the American West in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Filled with tales of adventure and danger, The Life and Adventures of Nat Love is a moving self portrait of a man who defied the circumstances of his birth and played a minor role in the transformation of the American landscape.

Born into slavery, Nat Love is raised on a plantation in Tennessee alongside two siblings. Taught to read and write by his father Sampson, Nat becomes resourceful and intelligent at a young age. Forced to work, first as a slave and then, after emancipation, as a sharecropper, Love dreams of escaping the South in order to make a name for himself. At 16, already well known as a breaker of horses, he heads West for work as a cowboy. On the wide-open plains of Kansas, he learns to shoot and survive with limited resources while fighting off rustlers and other nefarious characters. In Deadwood, Dakota Territory, 1876, Love wins a major rodeo competition and earns the nickname "Deadwood Dick." Despite his successes, Love is forced to continue his itinerant lifestyle, and travels south into Arizona. Exciting and beautifully written, The Life and Adventures of Nat Love is a record of the life of a forgotten American hero.

This edition of Nat Love's The Life and Adventures of Nat Love is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

Customer Reviews

2 ratings

A pleasant surprise, worth the read

I actually had this assigned to me in a western literature class, so I didn't have a choice but to read it. Fortunately it was one of those pleasant surprises you come along in school every now and then. It's a quick read, fun and interesting. The main character is one you'll love.

A worthy read.

The Life and Adventures of Nat Love is the narrative of a former slave who went west first to become a cowboy in Texas and across the plains during the American Reconstruction period and then to retire as a Pullman Porter in Oklahoma (I believe). It is a culturally significant work because there are obviously very few such stories and it highlights the fact so many cowboys in the latter part of the 19th century were, in fact, black. It would probably be inaccurate, however, to read Nat's narrative as the gospel truth. Rather, it reads more like a dime novel romp with a heavy dose of Horatio Alger and Booker T. Washington's 'Up from Slavery' philosophy. Which seems strangely fitting for a former slave during Reconstruction who believed himself undeniably American. Nat became a cowboy because he was a free spirit, despite slavery, and the order of the day for Americans was to 'go west.' Thus, like other Americans at the time, he has (at first, at least) no sympathy for marauding Indians (the best one being a dead one) and no cultural identification with non-Americans (i.e., Mexicans). Like other American cowboys (and dime novel heroes) he was a crack shot and superior horse-man, eventually earning the name of Deadwood Dick for these talents (notably on July 4). The narrative is definitely an intriguing read and anyone with an interest in slave or cowboy narratives, or dime store novels, should be interested in looking deeper into this one.
Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
GoDaddy Verified and Secured