Allan Pinkerton
America's Legendary Detective and the Birth of Private Security
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Georgetown University Press
Published:2nd Jun '25
Should be back in stock very soon
A deeply researched account of the life and legacy of the man who defined the profession of private eye
Allan Pinkerton, the world's most famous private detective, has been an enduring source of fascination since the nineteenth century. But the details of his impact, business empire, and private life have been incomplete.
Drawing on overlooked primary sources, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones provides an authoritative account of the man and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (PNDA). It is the story of how PNDA's founder and its successive generations of heirs put it at the center of American history for decades. A small sampling of Pinkerton's activities includes providing intelligence in the Civil War, pursuing high-profile outlaws like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and protecting scabs in the Homestead lockout, for which they became notorious. The book continues telling PNDA's history into the twentieth century and analyzes the legacies of Pinkertonism up to the present.
General readers as well as scholars of American history will be fascinated by this rich new portrait of Pinkerton's accomplishments, controversies, and contradictions.
Allan Pinkerton offers a riveting account of a largely overlooked figure whose shadow still looms over modern law enforcement and private security.
* Washington Examiner *Jeffreys-Jones explores Pinkerton's life in forensic detail.
* Glasgow Herald *Allan Pinkerton is deeply researched and seems likely to stand as the definitive biography of Pinkerton.
* H-Diplo *[H]is work goes further than any others toward finding such an explanation....Jeffreys-Jones's painstaking extraction of actual events from the myths constructed around them not only gives this work its intellectual heft but opens new insights into Pinkerton.
* H-Diplo *Jeffreys-Jones's book goes beyond a traditional biography or even a collective biography....[It] has opened the door to a host of additional research into records that have likely never before been used by scholars.
* H-Diplo *Jeffreys-Jones moves into a much more significant analysis of not only Allan Pinkerton and his agency but also the form of private security that he created.
* H-Diplo *This engaging and informative series of salient vignettes, which outlines over 100 years of the history of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, should delight scholars and general readers alike.
* CHOICE conneISBN: 9781647125844
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 590g
328 pages