The 75th Anniversary Edition Of Famous Gun Fighters Of The Western Frontier

Bat Masterson's illustrated biographies of legendary gunslingers Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Luke Short, Bill Tilghman, Ben Thompson, and others paint a vivid portrait of the Old West, a world of sharpshooters, cattle rustlers, and Dodge City justice.

Wyatt Earp is one of the most legendary figures of the nineteenth-century American West, notable for his role in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Some see him as a hero lawman of the Wild West, whereas others see him as yet another outlaw, a pimp, and failed lawman. Roy B. Young, Gary L. Roberts, and Casey Tefertiller, all notable experts on Earp and the Wild West, present in A Wyatt Earp Anthology an authoritative account of his life, successes, and failures. The editors have curated an anthology of the very best work on Earp—more than sixty articles and excerpts from books—from a wide array of authors, selecting only the best written and factually documented pieces and omitting those full of suppositions or false material. Earp’s life is presented in chronological fashion, from his early years to Dodge City, Kansas; triumph and tragedy in Tombstone; and his later years throughout the West. Important figures in Earp’s life, such as Bat Masterson, the Clantons, the McLaurys, Doc Holliday, and John Ringo, are also covered. Wyatt Earp’s image in film and the myths surrounding his life, as well as controversies over interpretations and presentations of his life by various writers, also receive their due. Finally, an extensive epilogue by Gary L. Roberts explores Earp and frontier violence.

He may be little known today, but Ben Daniels was a feared gunman who typified the journeyman gunfighter every bit as much as those whose names have become legend. Yet his story has eluded researchers and yarn-spinners alike—until now. Two prominent western historians have teamed up to tell the story of Ben Daniels’s rise from outlaw and convict to presidential protégé and high-ranking officer of the law. Tracing his life from jailhouse to White House, from Dodge City to San Juan Hill, Robert DeArment and Jack DeMattos present a full-length biography of Daniels, the most controversial of Teddy Roosevelt’s “White House Gunfighters.” The book faithfully traces Daniels’s early years, the time he spent in the Wyoming Territorial Penitentiary, his rebirth as a Dodge City lawman—including the controversy over his shooting a man in the back—and his part in the Battle of Cimarron. Following military service with the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, Daniels was appointed by President Roosevelt as U.S. marshal for turbulent Arizona Territory. Daniels was as quick with his mind as with a gun, but he had a rough ride to redemption. This original biography belongs on the shelf of every gunfighter buff and anyone interested in the broader story of the Old West. It rescues Daniels from the footnotes of history and shows us the amazing life of one of the West’s most intriguing gunmen.

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.