Education of a Wandering Man

Shortly before his death in June 1988, Louis LAmour completed writing his most unique adventure story: a personal reflection on his lifelong love affair with learning. Now Bantam Books proudly presents this special Centennial Edition of Education of a Wandering Man, in which LAmour vividly recalls many of the books he read, the places he visited, and the people he met that catalyzed his evolution as a writer.

In this, his most personal book ever, LAmour writes of growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, of the parents who instilled in him a love of the printed and spoken word, and of his decision to leave school at fifteen to make the world his classroom. While his contemporaries attended high school, LAmour skinned cattle in Texas, worked as a circus roustabout and a mine caretaker, won small-town prizefighting exhibitions, hoboed across Texas on the Southern Pacific, and shipped out to the West Indies, England, and Singapore as a merchant seaman. Wherever he wandered, his pockets were always bulging with books.

Like the beloved Louis LAmour novels and short stories that preceded it, Education of a Wandering Man has its share of frontier dramasuch as the authors desperate two-day trek across the blazing Mojave Desertand robust characters, ranging from Shanghai waterfront toughs to itinerant desert prospectors. All this ultimately informed and inspired the books that have made LAmour one of the most widely read authors of our time.

Ever both teacher and storyteller, Louis LAmour makes his education our education, in a book filled with glorious asides on everything from hobo culture to the fate of Butch Cassidy.

Here is a testamentpart memoir, part reflectionin which the author bequeaths to us a most wonderful legacy of the “education of a wandering man”: a life lived to the fullest through the never-ending quest for knowledge.

Louis LAmour is undoubtedly the bestselling frontier novelist of all time. He is the only American-born author in history to receive both the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal in honor of his life's work. He has published ninety novels; twenty-seven short-story collections; two works of nonfiction; a memoir, Education of a Wandering Man; and a volume of poetry, Smoke from This Altar. There are more than 300 million copies of his books in print worldwide.