Historians of the frontier and American West
Description
"The true story of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the famous Battle at the OK Corral, by the New York Times bestselling author of Dodge City and Wild Bill. On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, nine men clashed in what would be known as the most famous shootout in American frontier history. Thirty bullets were exchanged in thirty seconds, killing three men and wounding three others. The fight sprang forth from a tense, hot summer. Cattle rustlers had been terrorizing the back country of Mexico and selling the livestock they stole to corrupt ranchers. The Mexican government built forts along the border to try to thwart American outlaws, while Arizona citizens became increasingly agitated. Rustlers, who became known as the cow-boys, began to kill each other as well as innocent citizens. That October, tensions boiled over with Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne confronting the Tombstone marshal, Virgil Earp, and the suddenly deputized Wyatt and Morgan Earp and shotgun-toting Doc Holliday. Bestselling author Tom Clavin peers behind decades of legend surrounding the story of Tombstone to reveal the true story of the drama and violence that made it famous. Tombstone also digs deep into the vendetta ride that followed the tragic gunfight, when Wyatt and Warren Earp and Holliday went vigilante to track down the likes of Johnny Ringo, Curly Bill Brocius, and other cowboys who had cowardly gunned down his brothers. That "vendetta ride" would make the myth of Wyatt Earp complete and punctuate the struggle for power in the American frontier's last boom town"--
How the series evolves
Books in this Series
Tombstone
"The true story of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the famous Battle at the OK Corral, by the New York Times bestselling author of Dodge City and Wild Bill. On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, nine men clashed in what would be known as the most famous shootout in American frontier history. Thirty bullets were exchanged in thirty seconds, killing three men and wounding three others. The fight sprang forth from a tense, hot summer. Cattle rustlers had been terrorizing the back country of Mexico and selling the livestock they stole to corrupt ranchers. The Mexican government built forts along the border to try to thwart American outlaws, while Arizona citizens became increasingly agitated. Rustlers, who became known as the cow-boys, began to kill each other as well as innocent citizens. That October, tensions boiled over with Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne confronting the Tombstone marshal, Virgil Earp, and the suddenly deputized Wyatt and Morgan Earp and shotgun-toting Doc Holliday. Bestselling author Tom Clavin peers behind decades of legend surrounding the story of Tombstone to reveal the true story of the drama and violence that made it famous. Tombstone also digs deep into the vendetta ride that followed the tragic gunfight, when Wyatt and Warren Earp and Holliday went vigilante to track down the likes of Johnny Ringo, Curly Bill Brocius, and other cowboys who had cowardly gunned down his brothers. That "vendetta ride" would make the myth of Wyatt Earp complete and punctuate the struggle for power in the American frontier's last boom town"--
The saga of Billy the Kid
"First published in 1926, this entertaining and dramatic biography forever installed outlaw Billy the Kid in the pantheon of mythic heroes from the Old West and is still considered the single most influential portrait of Billy in this century. Saga focuses on the Kid's life and experiences in the bloody war between the Murphy-Dolan and Tunstall-McSween gangs in and around Lincoln, New Mexico, between 1878 and 1881. Burns paints the Kid as a boyish Robin Hood or romantic knight galvanized into a life of crime and killing by the war's violence and bloodshed. Billy represented the romantic and anarchic Old West that the march of civilization was rapidly displacing. His destroyer was Pat Garrett, the courageous sheriff of Lincoln County. Garrett's shooting of Billy in 1881 hastened the closing of the American frontier. Richard W. Etulain's introduction discusses the singular place of Saga in the historical literature on Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War."--BOOK JACKET.
History of "Billy the Kid,"
"Born in Texas in 1855, Siringo was a cowboy, Pinkerton detective, western writer, and Hollywood advisor until his death in 1928, and crossed the Kid's path once or twice in the Texas Panhandle and New Mexico. His account incorporates some inaccuracies but offers genuine historical nuggets such as cowboy Jim East's eyewitness account of the Kid's capture by Pat Garrett at Stinking Spring. Enormously popular at the turn of the century, Siringo single-handedly kept Billy the Kid's flame alive until the 1920s. Historian Frederick Nolan discusses the place of Siringo's account in Billy the Kid literature."--BOOK JACKET.
The Robin Hood of El Dorado
"First published in 1932 and never reprinted since, this historical drama re-creates the life and adventures of Joaquin Murrieta, a Hispanic social rebel in California during the tumultuous Gold Rush. Published during the Great Depression at a time of mass deportations of Hispanos to Mexico, this sympathetic portrait of Murrieta and Mexican Americans was unique for its time in voicing social protest. The author romanticizes the pastoral society of Mexican California and introduces the protagonist as a quiet, honest, and unpretentious resident of Saw Mill Flat, California. But the rape and murder of his wife, Rosita, by racist Anglo miners unleashes his vengeful rage. Strapping on his pistols, Murrieta tracks and kills Rosita's murderers and defends Hispanos against violence and dispossession by rampaging gold rush miners. Richard Griswold del Castillo discusses the significance of Murrieta to twentieth-century Mexican Americans and Chicanos, and of Burns's History to contemporary understanding of the mysterious social bandit."--BOOK JACKET.