Chris Enss – författare

If countless books and movies are to be believed, America’s Wild West was, at heart, a world of cowboys and Indians, sheriffs and gunslingers, scruffy settlers and mountain men—a man’s world. Here, Chris Enss, in the latest of her popular books to take on this stereotype, tells the stories of twelve courageous women who faced down schoolrooms full of children on the open prairies and in the mining towns of the Old West.

On May 17, 1876, Elizabeth Bacon Custer kissed her husband George goodbye and wished him good fortune in his efforts to fulfill the Army’s orders to drive in the Native Americans who would not willingly relocate to a reservation.  Adorned in a black taffeta dress and a velvet riding cap with a red peacock feather that matched George’s red scarf, she watched the proud regiment ride off.  It was a splendid picture. 

This new biography of Elizabeth Bacon Custer relates the story of the famous and dashing couple''s romance, reveals their life of adventure throughout the west during the days of the Indian Wars, and recounts the tragic end of the 7th cavalry and the aftermath for the wives. Libbie Custer was an unusual woman who followed her itinerant army husband''s career to its end--but she was also an amazing master of propaganda who tried to recreate George Armstrong Custer''s image after Little Bighorn. The author of many books about her own life (some of which are still in print) she was one of the most famous women of her time and remains a fascinating character in American history. 

Gangsters. Lovers. Legends. Meet the Kellys—the bootlegging, bank-robbing, husband-wife duo known as “Machine Gun” Kelly and Kathyrn Thorne—who masterminded one of the most infamous kidnappings in American crime. . . .

How did a small-time, hip-pocket bootlegger become one of the most notorious gangsters in the country? For George “Machine Gun” Kelly, the answer was simple: a woman. Her name was Kathryn Thorne, a charming, strong-minded beauty who had family connections in the crime world—and big ambitions for the tall, handsome bootlegger. By the time she met Kelly, she was already an experienced criminal herself, divorced twice, and ready to marry a man who could give her the posh life she always dreamed of. With that in mind, she bought Kelly his first machine gun. And the rest is history . . . George Kelly wasn’t a natural-born gangster and never carried a weapon bigger than a revolver. But Kathryn changed all that. Like a mobbed-up Lady Macbeth, she pushed her husband to commit greater crimes, introducing him to her friends in the underworld and convincing him to join in a series of bank robberies. Soon, the Kellys were living large, with a house in Texas, expensive jewelry, the works. But it wasn’t enough, and eventually the couple hatched a daring plot to kidnap oil tycoon Charles Urschel. Their plan worked. They collected the ransom—and captured the attention of the nation, the world . . . and the FBI. A shocking story of ambition and greed, crime and punishment, Meet the Kellys offers a fascinating portrait of a reluctant gangster named after a machine gun and a scheming moll as driven as Bonnie Parker and Ma Barker. A must-read for true crime fans.

“What we want to do is give our women even more liberty than they have. Let them do any kind of work that they see fit, and if they do it as well as men, give them the same pay.”—William F. Cody, 1899

With rough-riding cowboys, sure shots, and fantastic reenactments of battles and train robberies, Buffalo Bill Cody brought the myth of the Old West to life for audiences all over the world—and some of the most popular cowboys in his Wild West Show were young ladies. Cody surrounded himself with strong, intelligent, talented, beautiful women—and this revealing portrait tells the stories of his life and of his relationships with many of the trick riders, sharpshooters, and other women associated with the show for which he was famous.

During the gold rush, women worked alongside men panning and digging for gold and silver in the mountains of Colorado, California, and all the way up to Alaska. While many books have been written about the frontier women who ran brothels and boarding houses in mining towns, none have told the true stories of ladies who labored as hard as men out in the mines. A wonderful collection of true Americana, this book includes archival photographs of lady miners as well as the mines and boomtowns.