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Acclaim for Doc Holliday "Splendid . . . not only the most readable yet definitive study of Holliday yet published, it is one of the best biographies of nineteenth-century Western 'good-bad men' to appear in the last twenty years. It was so vivid and gripping that I read it twice." --Howard R. Lamar, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University, and author of The New Encyclopedia of the American West "The history of the American West is full of figures who have lived on as romanticized legends. They deserve serious study simply because they have continued to grip the public imagination. Such was Doc Holliday, and Gary Roberts has produced a model for looking at both the life and t...
The legend of Doc Holliday is now well past a century old. While his time on earth was brief, troubled and filled with pain, his legend took wings and flew. Beginning with his part in the now famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Denver newspapers first told his story in the late 19th century. They, followed by words of Wyatt Earp, grasped the glimmer of his tale. So enamored was the public that by 1939 he was a literary icon and his character had appeared in eight films. Historians, authors, screenwriters and eventually television refined the legend, which reached its apex perhaps with the 1993 film Tombstone. Doc Holliday's image has neither dimmed nor wavered in the 21st century. Broadway, country music and art join with literature and film to continue his mystique as the personification of a surviving legend of the U.S. West.
Elected for two-year terms, frontier sheriffs were the principal peace-keepers in counties that were often larger than New England states. As officers of the court, they defended settlers and protected their property from the ever-present violence on the frontier. Their duties ranged from tracking down stagecoach robbers and serving court warrants to locking up drunks and quelling domestic disputes.The reality of their job embraced such mandane duties as being jail keepers, tax collectors, quarantine inspectors, court-appointed executioners, and dogcatchers.
Spanning a thirty-year period, from the late 1800s until the 1920s, Hell Paso is the true story of the desperate men and notorious women that made El Paso, Texas the Old West’s most dangerous town. Supported by official court documents, government records, oral histories and period newspaper accounts, this book offers a bird’s eye view of the one-time “murder metropolis” of the Southwest.
Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Twentieth Century is an anthology of fifteen previously published articles and chapter excerpts covering key topics of the Texas Rangers during the twentieth century. The task of determining the role of the Rangers as the state evolved and what they actually accomplished for the benefit of the state is a difficult challenge. The actions of the Rangers fit no easy description. There is a dark side to the story of the Rangers; during the Mexican Revolution, for example, some murdered with impunity. Others sought to restore order in the border communities as well as in the remainder of Texas. It is not lack of interest that complicates the unveiling of the mythic...
Largely neglected by historians, political scientists, and criminal justice specialists, the available literature on the state police tends to be highly partisan and largely out of date. Based on legislative analysis and historical case study, this is an original contribution to our understanding of the development of the institution of the state police in the United States. Arguing that the creation of state police agencies was the result of a political process that reflected the interplay of a number of different forces, this is a rebuttal of rival interpretations of police development. The work should be of interest to criminal justice educators and political scientists on a college and university level, and to police historians.
Two subjects continue to fascinate people the Old West and a good mystery. This book explores and examines twenty-one of the Old West's most baffling mysteries, which continue to lure the curious and beg investigation but have eluded experts for decades. Many relate to the death or disappearance of some of the best-known lawmen and outlaws in history: Billy the Kid - Pat Garrett - Albert Jennings Fountain - Johnny RingoBuckskin Frank Leslie - The Catalina Kid - Warren Earp - Pearl HartBelle Starr - Bill Longly - John Wesley Hardin - John Wilkes BoothBlack Bart - Butch Cassidy - Pancho Villa - Etta PlaceOthers involve several mysterious tales and legends of lost mines and buried treasures that have never been recovered.