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"She went by many names--Mary Ann Keith, Ann Williams, Lauretta Williams, and more--but history knows her best as Loreta Janeta Velasquez, a woman who claimed to have posed as a man to fight for the Confederacy. In Inventing Loreta Velasquez, acclaimed historian William C. Davis delves into the life of one of America's early celebrities, peeling back the myths she herself created to reveal a startling and even more implausible reality. This groundbreaking biography reveals a woman quite different from the public persona she promoted. In contrast to her bestselling memoir, The Woman in Battle, in which she claimed she was an emphatic Confederate patriot, Velazquez in fact never saw combat. Instead, during the war she manufactured bullets for the Union and convinced her Confederate husband to desert. After the Civil War ended, she wore many masks, masterminding ambitious confidence schemes worth millions, such as creating a phony mining company, conning North Carolina residents to back her financially in a fake immigration scheme, and attracting investors to build a railroad across western Mexico. With various husbands, Velasquez sought her fortune both in the American West and in the Klondike, though her endeavors cost one husband his life. She also became a social reformer advocating on behalf of better prison conditions, the Cuban revolt against Spain, and the plight of Cuban refugees. Further, Velasquez was one of the first women to foray into journalism and presidential politics. Always a sensational press favorite, throughout her life she displayed an uncanny ability to manipulate popular media and use her fame to her benefit in a way that foreshadows celebrities of our own time, including using her testimony in a Congressional inquiry about Civil War counterfeiting as a means of promoting her latest business ventures. So little has been known of Velasquez's real life that postmodern scholars have often glorified her as a 'woman warrior' and used her as an example in cross-gender issues and arguments concerning Hispanic nationalism. Davis firmly refutes these notions by bringing the historical Velasquez to the surface. Drawing on hundreds of sources including Velasquez's personal correspondence, Inventing Loreta Velasquez prompts a reevaluation of historical representations of this complex public figure"-- "Inventing Loreta Velasquez is a search for the reality behind the woman known as Loreta Velasquez, author of The Woman in Battle, one of only two memoirs by women who claimed to have posed as men to serve in the Civil War. For many years, historians have questioned the authenticity of parts of the book but mostly accept it as genuine"--

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical. --- BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women. --- HISTORY / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877). --- HISTORY / United States / 19th Century. --- Women journalists --- Women social reformers --- Swindlers and swindling --- Celebrities --- Male impersonators --- Women soldiers --- Cross-dressers (Male impersonators) --- Crossdressers (Male impersonators) --- Impersonators, Male --- Impersonators of men --- Persons --- Women as soldiers --- Women in the military --- Soldiers --- Velazquez, Loreta Janeta, --- Buford, Harry T., --- Velasquez, Loreta, --- Keith, Mary Ann, --- Williams, Ann, --- Williams, Lauretta, --- Clark, Lauretta J., --- DeCaulp, Lauretta, --- United States --- History

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A History Book Club SelectionA Military History Book Club Selection Virginia emerged from the year 1861 in much the same state of uncertainty and confusion as the rest of the Confederacy. While the North was known to be rebuilding its army, no one could be sure if the northern people and government were willing to continue the war. Virginians' expectations for the coming year did not prepare them for what was about to happen, for in 1862 the war became earnest and real, and the Old Dominion became then and thereafter the major battleground of the war in the East. The landscape and the peopl

United States --- Virginia --- History --- Campaigns. --- Politics and government