With Badges and Bullets: Lawmen and Outlaws in the Old West

by Richard W. Etulain

Book Overview

This second book in the Notable Westerners Series highlights ten lawmen and gunfighters, men and women who shaped the American west. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555914330
• ISBN13: 9781555914332
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press - Fulcrum
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Way They Really Were

This collection of mini-biographies tells the intriguing story of how late-19th lawmen - who sometimes strayed over the legal line then as they sometimes do today - dealt with Old West outlaws, colorfully characterized by one source as "that line of scum on the waves of advancing civilization." Within 200 pages there is a chapter about each of the usual characters: Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, Pat Garret, Tom Horn, Doc Holliday, Joaquin Murrieta, Billy the Kid, Belle Starr, Jesse James and Pearl Hart. In each chapter are details, so far as they're known, about each characters early life and family and what they did apart from the incidents for which they're best known. I found the more mundane aspects of some of the lawmen's lives - e.g., non-law enforcement occupations, political activities - and the way they occasionally crossed paths with other famous and well known people of their era especially interesting. As for the outlaws, some were complex but most were just plain bad guys with few or no known redeeming characteristics. The editors and the authors are all university historians who sort out as much fact as possible and don't speculate - in the manner that some current writers do to fictionalize supposed nonfiction - about unknowns or hypothesize pointlessly about the characters' psychological motives. Given that each chapter is written by a different author it is somewhat amazing how uniformly tightly and well written this book is. What a pleasure to see a book in which the editors actually... well, edit. There are several interesting photographs of most primary characters and some secondary ones. Warning: with a few exceptions (Earp and Hickok for instance) most of them are far from the movie-star handsome images of films and TV shows about them. A 14-page appendix lists references and sources by chapter for anyone who wants to study a particular character or episode more thoroughly. While I'd have liked to have some chapters about more obscure characters, especially lawmen in regions other than the Great Plains, I suppose one reason a relatively few are so well know is because then, as now, the media only focused on and documented a small number who became anointed as "celebrities". Highly recommended to anyone interested in the late-19th Century American West, American history in general or anyone who just wants to learn more about characters so well known - even in their own lifetimes - from popular media portrayals.

The real West by those that lived it!

Wyatt Earp, Will Bill Hickok, Pat Garrett, Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid, and Jesse James are but a few of the legends of the Old West. With Bullets and Badges they come to life and the stories are remarkable and fascinating.History has a way of distorting the truth and legends make the truth hard to find, this book takes out the legend and myth and bring you the story of some of the most famous and infamous men and women who have ever lived/You'll read the way that lawmen "crossed" over the line to catch the "bad" guys, See how the Tombstone really was and how Wild Bill Hickok dies playing poker. The amazing thing about this book is how easy to read it was.The style of the author makes this book a real pleasure to read. The book cleared up many misconceptions I had about the way the old west was run and those that lived during that time. A first class job and a must have for those interested in history.