The story of Jesse James remains one of America's most cherished and wrong-headed myths. Less heroic than brutal, James was a product of the American Civil War; a Confederate partisan of expansive ambition and cunning, who helped invent his own valiant legend. A member of a vicious band of Missouri guerrillas during the war, James sought redemption afterwards, but, rode further from it, redeeming instead the glorious memory of the Old South.