Billy And Paulita

Author, Gale Cooper's Billy and Paulita: The Saga of Billy the Kid, Paulita Maxwell, and the Santa Fe Ring, in hardcover and paperback, 658 pages, is a literary milestone, using research of 40,000 pages of archival documents and books, analysis of the historic sites, and expert consultants to bring to life the tragedy of Billy Bonney's star-crossed romance with the young, land grant heiress, Paulita Maxwell, and the lost Lincoln County War freedom fight against the deadly Santa Fe Ring; which branded him the outlaw "Billy the Kid," and killed him as the last of its adversaries.

Billy and Paulita, the new edition of Joy of the Birds, is a milestone in the literature of Billy the Kid. It is arguably the definitive revisionist telling of his story by one of that history's experts. Billy and Paulita is a virtual world based on research utilizing 40,000 pages of archival documents and books, and input of over 300 consultants, and recreation of the scenes at the actual historic sites. As docufiction, it ends a 130 year cover-up of New Mexico's Santa Fe Ring: a cabal of land-grabbing robber baron, lawmen, and thugs which precipitated the 1878 Lincoln County War freedom fight. Central to that rebellion was Billy Bonney, outlawed by those victorious enemies as "Billy the Kid." He had to die. The truths he testified to could have tumbled the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes. Billy and Paulita is also America's Romeo and Juliet: in a star-crossed romance of the homeless drifter Billy Bonney and young Paulita Maxwell, the richest heiress in New Mexico Territory. Billy was killed by betrayal and by the hand of Sheriff Pat Garrett in her brother's bedroom in the family mansion, before midnight on July 14, 1881. Paulita, just pregnant with Billy's child, would have heard the fatal shot. Billy and Paulita is also a mythic hero journey in a cosmic battle of good and evil. Billy Bonney's astounding escapes from Ring clutches and death, and his moral transformations while fighting Ring injustices, yield his comprehension of a wise woman's lesson of "joy of the birds," told to him in childhood. Like the birds, one can fly without fear, because there are millions of moments to be alive, only one of death, and then one has forever. From that revelation, comes freedom to follow one's highest ideals, and to fearlessly and joyfully walk one's earthly path to its end - as did Billy Bonney. Author, Gale Cooper, is a Harvard educated, M.D. psychiatrist specializing in murder case consultation. Her earlier edition of Billy and Paulita is titled Joy of the Birds. She has also written non-fiction Billy the Kid books.

A central character in legends and histories of the Old West, Billy the Kid rivals such western icons as Jesse James and General George Armstrong Custer for the number of books and movies his brief, violent life inspired. Billy the Kid: A Reader’s Guide introduces readers to the most significant of these written and filmed works. Compiled and written by a respected historian of the Old West and author of a masterful new biography of Billy the Kid, this reader’s guide includes summaries and evaluations of biographies, histories, novels, and movies, as well as archival sources and research collections. Surveying newspaper articles, books, pamphlets, essays, and book chapters, Richard W. Etulain traces the shifting views of Billy the Kid from his own era to the present. Etulain’s discussion of novels and movies reveals a similar shift, even as it points out both the historical inaccuracies and the literary and cinematic achievements of these works. A brief section on the authentic and supposed photographs of the Kid demonstrates the difficulties specialists and collectors have encountered in locating dependable photographic sources. This discerning overview will guide readers through the plethora of words and images generated by Billy the Kid’s life and legend over more than a century. It will prove invaluable to those interested in the demigods of the Old West—and in the ever-changing cultural landscape in which they appear to us.

Many stories have been written about the exploits of Billy the Kid, the charismatic outlaw of the Old West. Some have been pure fiction, designed to entertain and excite. Purple prose writers began chronicling the exploits of Billy as early as the late 1870s. Others have been biographical, researched by historians or recorded by those who knew him, including his murderer, Sheriff Pat Garrett. But there was once a different side to the famous gunfighter, a softer more artistic side that seems at odds with Billy’s reputation for shooting, killing, and robbing. Born Henry McCarty, he was also known by the names Henry Antrim, Kid Antrim, and William H. Bonney. He didn’t shoot twenty-one men, as has been claimed. Four is a more likely number, three in self-defense. In Before Billy the Kid, author Melody Groves explores the early life of the infamous outlaw, the teenage boy who loved to sing and dance. The young man who was polite, educated, and popular. A boy who had the bad luck to be orphaned at fifteen and left with no one to guide him through life. How different history might have been if Billy had pursued his love of music instead of a life of crime.

In the annals of American western history, few people have left behind such lasting and far-reaching fame as Billy the Kid. Some have suggested that his legend began with his death at the end of Pat Garrett’s revolver on the night of July 14, 1881, in Fort Sumner. Others believe that the legend began with his unforgettable jailbreak in Lincoln, New Mexico, several months prior on April 28, 1881. Others still insist his legend began with the publication in 1926 of Walter Noble Burns’s book, The Saga of Billy the Kid. James B. Mills has left no stone unturned in his twenty-year quest to tell the complete story of Billy the Kid. He explores the Kid’s disputable origins, his family’s migration from New York into the Southwest, and how he became an orphan, as well as his involvement in the Lincoln County War, his outlaw exploits, and his dealings with Governor Lew Wallace. Mills illuminates the Kid’s relationships with his enemies, lovers, and numerous friends to contextualize the man’s character beyond his death and legacy. Most importantly, Mills is the first historian to fully detail the Kid’s relations with New Mexicans of Spanish descent. So, the question remains, who really was the person the world knows as Billy the Kid? Was he more than a young reprobate committed to a life of crime, who relished becoming a famous outlaw and cold-blooded, self-absorbed “sociopath” or “thug” that some still prefer him—need him—to be? Or was he in fact, the generally good-hearted, generous, courteous, young vigilante that so many remembered with considerable fondness, who ultimately preferred the company of the more peaceable Hispanic population than his own Anglo people? In this groundbreaking biography, Mills takes the reader closer to the flesh-and-blood human being named Henry McCarty, alias William H. Bonney, than ever before.

In The West of Billy the Kid, renowned authority Frederick Nolan has assembled a comprehensive photo gallery of the life and times of Billy the Kid. In text and in more than 250 images-many of them published here for the first time-Nolan recreates the life Billy lived and the places and people he knew. This unique assemblage is complemented by maps and a full biography that incorporates Nolan’s original research, adding fresh depth and detail to the Kid’s story and to the lives and backgrounds of those who witnessed the events of his life and death. Here are the faces of Billy’s family, friends, and enemies: John Tunstall and John Chisum, Sheriff Pat Garrett and Governor Lew Wallace, Jimmy Dolan and Bob Olinger, Alexander McSween and Paulita Maxwell, and many others. Here are Santa Fe and Silver City as Billy the Kid saw them, Lincoln, Las Vegas, and Tascosa. Recent photographs show the Kid’s haunts as they appear today.

One of the great folk legends of the Wild West, William H. Bonney went from cowboy and rancher's gunslinger to a pure outlaw, forever dodging justice in New Mexico before it was even a state. On the one hand, he was charming, fun-loving, often present at social events, quite appealing to the ladies. Also conversant in Spanish, "Billito" was popular with the Spanish speaking crowd. On the other hand, he had no compunction to coldly kill a man, a sheriff, a deputy—anyone who got in the way of his rustling cattle or horses for an illicit living. He also proved hard to keep in jail once he was caught. It is probably his daring escapes from jails that made him most famous, and this is the main subject of this biography, which traces his story up through his death by a gunshot in the pitch darkness, fired by lawmen obsessed with getting rid of him.