Complete Works of Brann, The Iconoclast, Volume 12

He called himself The Iconoclast, and he meant it. William Cowper Brann arrived in Waco, Texas in the 1890s with a newspaper and a彻底 refusal to bow to any orthodoxy, religious or otherwise. His publication, also called The Iconoclast, became a lightning rod for every controversy tearing at the fabric of late Victorian America: Catholic versus Protestant sectarian warfare, the rise of universities he deemed intellectual frauds, the temperance movement, and the raw, violent politics of the Texas frontier. Brann wrote with a ferocity that was literally lethal. His prose attacked Baptists, prohibitionists, and the comfortable assumptions of his age with the same gun-toting bravado he brought to every confrontation. The man was as dangerous with his pen as with his Colt. He was killed at 43 in a gunfight, shot in the back, yet still managed to draw his own weapon, kill his attacker, and walk to jail before dying the next morning. This volume collects his most incendiary work: a window into a forgotten American era of fierce intellectual independence, sectarian violence, and the price of speaking truths too many wanted silenced.