William Wallace: Brave Heart Book

This book starts out slow, but has a good overview of the issues of the times, and the narrative really picks up speed and interest once it really gets into Wallace's story. The evidence of his life is sketchy and incomplete, but the author does a great job of being clear about what his sources are, and sharing some of the fun stories from the oral tradition even while he is open that the evidence behind the stories isn't reliable.

In the end, you get a fairly complete picture of William Wallace: the few hard facts, the few mostly certain events and the atmospheric, swashbuckling nature of the reputation he gathered around himself throughout a life of heroism and violence in service of a cause as told through folklore and songs and rumors about him. There were a lot of great stories that I think would have made fantastic scenes in the movie Braveheart- it could have been made even better than it already was- there's a lot of material to work with from Wallace's life.

Wallace was a more influential figure than I had realized, a true political as well as military leader, who spearheaded some very important changes to military tactics and organization that undermined the feudal organization of the army that had existed before. He, for a short time, turned the Scottish into a real army, not just a ragtag bunch of fighters. And despite the english victory at Falkirk, they were never really able to keep Scotland all the way subdued during this period.

A really good read-fun, epic underdog history at its best.