Iron Hunter

In 1881, a twenty-one-year-old Purdue dropout arrived in Florence, Wisconsin, a iron-mining town on the frozen edge of civilization. The place was controlled by criminals who ran everything from the saloons to the ballot box. Young Chase Osborn bought a failing newspaper and used it as a weapon, printing truth that put a target on his back. This is the story of how one man with nothing but nerve and a printing press took on a town of hoodlums, survived, and kept going. Osborn eventually moved to Sault Ste. Marie, where he became postmaster, fish and game warden, and railroad commissioner before rising to serve as Michigan's Progressive Governor from 1911 to 1913. Iron Hunter traces an extraordinary American arc: from a log cabin birth in Indiana to world travels and wealth, from fighting gangsters in a lawless Northwoods town to shaping state policy. It's a memoir written in the raw, confident voice of a man who believed the world belonged to the bold.