Last of the Breed [Import] [Paperback]

Louis L'Amour (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books; New Ed edition (1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553173863
• ISBN-13: 978-0553173864
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (114 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,821,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"I think of myself in the oral tradition--as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man in the shadows of a campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered--as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs, including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, and miner, and was an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontiers and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are more than 300 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

The recipient of many great honor and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist to ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour publishing tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not typical Louis L'Amour, June 17, 2001

By 

Joseph H Pierre "Joe Pierre" (Salem, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last of the Breed (Mass Market Paperback)

The late Louis L'Amour wrote mostly Westerns--specifically about the 'Old West'--for which he is justly famous. I may have read them all, but I hope not. I hope there are a few more out there, somewhere.

This book, however, is different. This is the kind of authentically detailed story that is his hallmark, but it is more modern. It is about U.S. Air Force Major Joe Mack, whose forbears were Sioux Indian. When his experimental aircraft is forced down in the USSR, he is captured, and no one but he and his captors know he is a prisoner. He escapes a prison camp, and is forced to survive the Siberian wilderness in an effort to make it to the Bering Strait, which he will have to cross to get back home. He is pursued relentlessly by a Yakut scout who knows the land intimately. Joe Mack must think like a Sioux to escape.

Louis Dearborn L'Amour (originally Lamoore) lived the lives that he portrayed. He was a roustabout, merchant seaman, boxer, cowboy, logger, miner, and an army officer during WWII in tank destroyers. He was shipwrecked in the West Indies, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, and circled the earth on merchant ships. He wrote a hundred books, and had more million copy best-sellers than any other author. I was personally desolated by his death. What a glorious man! He was a true troubadour in the original sense.

Joseph H. Pierre
Author of The Road to Damascus: Our Journey Through Eternity

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A good yarn, August 5, 2004

By 

E. S Winskill (Tacoma, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last of the Breed (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a good story, deserving neither the overly fulsome praise nor the sour dismissals found in some of the reviews here. I've read it a couple of times over the years, and for many years it was the only L'Amour book I'd read. It's a good survival adventure tale, very servicably written.
Here's a tip: for those who liked this story, check out Dersu Uzala, a Kurosawa movie set in Siberia; the protagonist is an old Siberian hunter and trapper, and you'll get a real flavor of the country and way of life described by L'Amour in Last of the Breed.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my all time favourite books, April 11, 2004

By 

Kali "bengaligirl" (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last of the Breed (Mass Market Paperback)

Louis L'Amour has never been one of my favourite authors because most of his books are Westerns but "Last of the Breed" is an exception to my rule simply because it isn't a Western. This is a brilliant novel that is both suspenseful and creative and it is a real shame that a sequel was never done.

Set during the hostilities between the Soviet Union and the USA Joseph "Joe Mack" Makatozi is a man trapped in enemy territory. He is a downed test Pilot who has been captured by the Russians and is seemingly at their mercy in the inhospitable landscape called Siberia; the only inhabited cold Hell in existence.

However Joe Mack isn't your ordinary test pilot. He is part Sioux and in his blood is the will to survive a savage land that was once home to his ancestors. He escapes his prison with the goal of crossing Siberia and making his way across the Bering Straits and into America, something that has not been done by modern man.

Joe Mack finds himself slowly merging with the wilderness, forced to rely on his ancestral abilities to survive the killing cold and elude the constant danger of his determined Soviet pursuers, including a man who is to become his nemesis, a Siberian Native Yakut tracker called Alekhin who knows that in order to trap his quarry he must think and act like a Sioux.

As we follow Joe Mack across the deadly landscape we become aware that he is changing, he is becoming what his ancestors once were thousands of years ago, trackers, hunters, killers, but ultimately survivors.

It is a slow transformation, and along the way we watch him struggle to hold onto his humanity, finding love in the guise of a woman who helps him and a fragile but brief friendship with a crippled furrier but all the time he is in the cruel wilderness Joe Mack is changing into something that can never revert back to what it once was.

He hungers for revenge against Alekhin and the jovial but brutal Soviet Commander who imprisoned him and the book ends on an eerie haunting note when the Soviet Commander receives the scalp of Alekhin and a gentle warning from the wilderness that he will be next...

This is a truly magnificent book about a man's ability to transcend his environment and upbringing and descend into savagery in order to survive.

Once you start reading this book you won't be able to put it down, this is no run of the mill pot boiler about the noble savage. There nothing remotely noble about Joe Mack, but you find yourself admiring him for his ability to survive against all the odds.