William Brandon (author)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

William Edward Brandon (September 21, 1914 – April 11, 2002) was an American writer and historian best known for his work about

American West.[1][2]

Early life

Brandon was born in Kokomo, Indiana, but spent his childhood in various locales, including the Yucatán and New Mexico. He held a brief job in a steel mill, before he began working as a professional writer in 1938, although this was interrupted by his service as a photographer for the United States Army Air Forces in the Pacific Theater during World War II.[1]

Works

Brandon published a variety of

.

By the 1950s, he began pursuing his interest in non-fiction writing and in 1955 produced an account of John Charles Frémont's 1848 attempt to cross the Rocky Mountains in his book The Men and the Mountain.[3]

Although Brandon's formal education ended after high school, his scholarship was sufficiently respected that he was from 1966–1967 a visiting professor at the

California State College in Long Beach
, California.

Death and legacy

Brandon died in Clearlake, California, on April 11, 2002, of cancer.[1] His last book, The Rise and Fall of North American Indians: From Prehistory Through Geronimo, was published posthumously the year after his death.[4]

Literary works

  • The Dangerous Dead (1943)
    Dodd, Mead & Company
  • The Men and the Mountain (1955)
    ISBN 0-8371-5873-7. An account of Frémont's
    failed fourth expedition.
  • The American Heritage Book of Indians (1961)
    ISBN 0-517-39180-5. (short introduction by John F. Kennedy
    )
  • The Magic World: American Indian Songs and Poems (1971)
  • The Last Americans: The Indian in American Culture (1974)
  • New Worlds for Old: Reports from the New World and Their Effect on the Development of Social Thought in Europe, 1500–1800 (1986)
  • Quivira: Europeans in the Region of the Santa Fe Trail, 1540–1820 (1991)
  • The Rise and Fall of North American Indians: From Prehistory Through Geronimo (2003)

References