This intelligent and totally unpretentious novel, "Wave the High Banner," contains, so far as the knowledge of the present reviewer runs, the first full-length portrait in fiction of Davy Crockett. "Wave High the Banner" is a novel, in the sense that fact and invention are discreetly combined to suit the purposes of the story teller. But Dee Brown has given us what must be accounted, nevertheless, an exceptionally shrewd and just evaluation of a picturesque frontiersman who has been left until now to the writers of juvenile thrillers….

"Wave High the Banner" is a simple and straightforward chronicle of Crockett's life, written without any self-conscious grace of manner or any obvious effort to put into the story more significance than it rightfully contains. It is told in an idiom not far removed from that which Crockett himself might have commanded. Where invention was needed to supply missing chapters...