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And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight

Paula Mitchell Marks

And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight Paula Mitchell Marks List Price: $22.95
By: William Morrow & Co
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

How can one know so much and understand so little? 3 out of 5 stars.
4 of 7 people found this review helpful.

When I began reading this book, I was quite favorably impressed. The author had obviously done her homework and wrote widely about all manner of happenings in the early west and about the Earps' early days. Gradually, however, I noted that she was cherry picking her facts and was choosing her words quite carefully so as to depict the Earps, in general, and Wyatt Earp, in particular, in the worst possible light. It occurred to me that she must be setting them up to be the villains of the piece when she finally got around to the subject of the book, "The Gunfight at the OK Corral." As I continued to read, I looked forward to seeing if this would prove to be the case. I was not disappointed.

It was hard for me to believe but, in spite of her apparently extensive research, the author had somehow concluded that the Earp brothers were the cause of the problems in Tombstone, and (if I understand what she wrote and I read) that they initiated the action at the corral. She even went so far as to hypothesize a number of scenarios, leading up to that event, all of which reflected badly on Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holliday. Strangely enough, however, although she had inadvertently set the stage for an even more likely scenario, she failed to mention it. I refer to the fact that, a number of pages earlier, she had quoted Ike Clanton as telling Wyatt Earp that if his associates ever became aware of the fact that he had conspired with Earp to capture three stage robbers, his life wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel.

What, then, would a cowardly Ike Clanton do when faced with the possibility that that information was, or was about to become, known? Of course: he would get drunk and go on the warpath against the Earps, which is exactly what he did. Add to this the fact that several of Ike's friends and associates, including his younger brother, just happened to arrive in town shortly after his widely known threats and the stage was set for a deadly confrontation largely based on a serious misunderstanding. In this scenario, Ike Clanton, by his threats and blustering tirade, would inadvertently have caused the gunfight at the OK Corral. This, to me, is a real possibility.

But with regard to the Earps and their reputation: does this author seriously believe that men who had been law officers in Wichita and Dodge City over a period of years, with minimal blood shed and with stellar reputations, would suddenly become outlaws? And does she seriously believe that a sickly dentist, who had made his living as a gambler, would all of a sudden decide to become a stage robber? A more likely scenario is that the "Democrats," as she termed them, i.e., those opposed to law and order in Tombstone, would use the same approach that Democrats use today. The best defense being a good offense, they would simply accuse the Earps of doing what they, themselves, were doing. Which is exactly what they did. Furthermore, if one considers the Earp brothers friends and associates, and their accomplishments over the years, as opposed Sheriff Behan's friends, associates, and posse members, Curly Bill Brocius, Ike Clanton, John Ringo, etc., one must conclude that the Earps, although flawed in many respects, acted in accordance with the law and that Sheriff Behan was either an outlaw; an associate of outlaws; or was somehow beholden to them, possibly for voting him into office.

So, although I found this book to be interesting in many respects, I find the author to be on the wrong side of the fence. And I can't help but wonder: How could someone seemingly know so much and understand so little. (For a better read, try "Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp" by Steven Lubet, "Famous Gun Fighters of the Western Frontier" by Bat Masterson, "The O.K. Corral Inquest" by Alford E. Turner, "Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend" by Casey Tefertiller, "The Earps of Tombstone" by Douglas D. Martin, "The Tombstone Story" by John Myers Myers, or Tombstone's Epitaph" by Douglas D. Martin.")

A Weekend in September

John Edward Weems

A Weekend in September John Edward Weems Amazon Price: $11.86
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

You will tremble as you read 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

It's odd that no titantic movie has ever been made about the greatest natural disaster to ever occur in the United States. Kind of like East Texas, the Big Thicket, and the swamps, the Galveston disaster somehow didn't become part of the Texas myth. Yet, what happened was more devastating than the Chicago fire, San Fransico earthquake, and the Andrea Doria.

Having lost a childhood home to a hurricane on the Texas coast and seeing, with my own eyes, the result of a true 'catagory-5 hurricane,' (the 1900 storm is not rated as a catagory 5), this book terrifies me and makes me feel fortunate at the same time.

My sister and I have studied the maps and explored Galveston Island again and again. We have located where houses or businesses once stood and marvel at the houses (especially on Broadway) that withstood the storm. We stand at the sites and try to imagine what it was like before, during, and after. But nothing we, or anyone now, do can come close to understanding the terror of what happened that night. The Gulf of Mexico and Galveston Bay met and covered the island. There was no warning.

And those who live on the Eastern coast know, there is to this day, no true warning. One of the few things that make weather reports different now from then, is a person inside a tv set equipped with a pointer and big swirling map broadcasting a warning about a hurricane that may or may not hit New Orleans, Port Aransas or Canada.

It's not the weather reporters' fault. It is the fault of the United States government for underfunding the weather bureau and weather research. It's so much easier to blame the people stupid enough to live on the coast in the first place. Just like it's easy to blame the people dumb enough to live in California on a fault; those who live on or near mountains; those who live in fire-prone areas with wind and trees; those who live in flood zones in the desert when it rains, etc.

Somehow, out of all the horrors described in this book, the image that sticks most in my mind is the description of the two terrified women at Morgan's Point seeing a light nearing their house. They are filled suddenly with hope of rescue, until they see the light pass them by and head on downstream, and realize it's a lantern atop a table inside a house that belongs to a neighbor.

For years Galveston did everything it could to wipe out the memory of what had happened there. Now the 1900 hurricane is a huge tourist draw.

All of the natural barriers that saved the place where I now live have been dredged up for its' shell the past 30 years. To this day, the Army Corp of Engineers continues to destroy Galveston Bay in an effort to give itself a reason to exist. In the end, the Corp of Engineers and our own government through its weakening enviromental policies, have destroyed more here than that weekend storm in 1900.



Pueblos, Spaniards, and The Kingdom of New Mexico

John L. Kessell

Pueblos, Spaniards, and The Kingdom of New Mexico John L. Kessell Amazon Price: $18.21
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Pueblos, Spaniards, and the Kingdom of New Mexico 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Kessel has again delivered a hard-to-put-down narrative of Spanish New Mexico that would serve as a perfect accompaniment to a college-level course on my favorite subject: New Mexico!

Editorial Review:

The first narrative history devoted to the tumultuous seventeenth century in New Mexico. Kessell's work presents a clearer picture than ever before of events leading to the Pueblo Revolt.

Going to Texas: Five Centuries of Texas Maps

Center for Texas Studies at TCU

Going to Texas: Five Centuries of Texas Maps Center for Texas Studies at TCU Amazon Price: $26.37
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By: Texas Christian University Press
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This volume illustrates the history of the Lone Star State through color plates of sixty-four historic Texas maps from the Marty and Yana Davis Map Collection, Sul Ross State University, Alpine, and includes ten original essays written by noted historians. Going to Texas is a catalog that will accompany the exhibition of the Davis Map Collection to ten museums throughout the Southwest over a period of two years. It will begin in Dallas at the Hall of State with the Dallas Historical Society and conclude at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth.

The maps range from the earliest sixteenth-century maps of New Spain through early settlement, the Republic and statehood, and into the twenty-first century. These objects are not only historical documents but also served to promote settlement or another aspect of Texas, to chart transport lines, and to guide the military. The earliest maps demonstrate cartography as an art that only centuries later evolved into a science.

The accompanying essays cover the Spanish exploration, the Louisiana Purchase and the Texas borderlands, empresario settlement, the Republic of Texas, the Trans-Pecos, statehood and the Confederacy, the end of the nineteenth century, the Mexican wars, and Texas in the twentieth century. They provide the historical context in which the maps should be viewed.

The maps are presented not only as historical artifacts but also as representations of culture, art, politics, and the great trends of industrialization and westward expansion. They reflect much of the American movement toward Manifest Destiny and the creation of the myths of "The West." The collection serves not only to illustrate Texas history but also American and European cultures over the centuries. Both the map collector and the amateur will benefit from reading this catalog.

A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders

Gary M. Lavergne

A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders Gary M. Lavergne Amazon Price: $12.89
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

factually frightening 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

This book reads very quickly and easily. It is SO well researched and organized that I skipped the Time Life Books version of the Whitman story. The split second action and microscopic details are all here. It will make your heart race if you imagine what Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez must have felt.

Editorial Review:

The bodies kept falling, the blood was real, and the man on the deck, a consummate actor for a number of years, was no longer acting.

On August 1, 1966, Charles Joseph Whitman ascended the University of Texas Tower and committed what was then the largest simultaneous mass murder in American history. He gunned down forty-five people inside and around the Tower before he was killed by two Austin police officers. During the previous evening he had killed his wife and mother, bringing the total to sixteen people dead and at least thirty-one wounded. The murders spawned debates over issues which still plague America today: domestic violence, child abuse, drug abuse, military indoctrination, gun control, the insanity defense, and the delicate balance between civil liberties and public safety.

Guns of the Wild West (Buffalo Bill Historical Centre)

David Kennedy

Guns of the Wild West (Buffalo Bill Historical Centre) David Kennedy Amazon Price: $11.96
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By: Running Press
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Slim, Colorful Volume About the Guns that Won The West 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

The curator of the firearms museum of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, David Kennedy, has written a masterful but all too slim volume about the guns that won the Wild West.

Included here are the Sharps Buffalo Rifle used in great effect in the tragic decimation of the buffalo, the LeMat Revolver and Carbine, used in varying degrees of success by the Confederacy during the Civil War, the 1866 "Trapdoor" Springfields, which were used by Custer's men at the Big Horn, the "pepperbox" pistols (so small they could fit in a pepperbox...and sometimes so dangerous even to the user, as all four shots could go off even if the owner intended on firing only one), the oh-so-familiar Colt Navy Revolvers - used mainly by Army Forces! (I have a replica of Confederate 1860 Navy Colt in my possession), and so many more.

Kennedy has also opined that Custer and his men were done in by sheer numbers of Sioux and Cheyenne, not that the single-shot weapons used by the 7th Cavalry, or that the majority of Braves had repeating rifles. In fact, according to Kennedy, only 30-50% of the Sioux and Cheyenne even possessed firearms. Custer and his men were done in chiefly by the bow, the arrow, and muzzle-loading trade guns.

Kennedy also adds interesting and intriguing vignettes about the owners and users of the guns of the Wild West, from George Custer to Buffalo Bill to Gary Cooper, from Frederick Remington to Dick Cheney, the notorious - Wild Bill Hickok, John Wesley Hardin, and William "The Kid" Bonney, and the great - Annie Oakley.

My only problem is that the volume, while chock full of facts and data, and very informative trivia, is too slim - and does not enough period illustrations. Still, it is deserving of a five-star review.

Required reading for those visiting the wonderful "Guns and Gamblers" exhibition at the Desert Caballeros Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona.

Editorial Review:

For those with an interest in American history and sporting, here's a fascinating, authoritative look at some of the most famous guns of the Wild West, drawn from the collection of the Cody Firearms Museum of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. Known as "the Smithsonian of the West," this grand museum complex is home to many treasures related to the history, art, and ethnology of the American West. Following the success of our previous Courage title The Civil War Catalog, another copiously illustrated hardcover format focused on historic weapons and equipment, this beautifully photographed new volume showcases more than 50 of the actual weapons used by some of the most famous western legends, from Lewis and Clark to Buffalo Bill Cody, Theodore Roosevelt, and John "Jeremiah" Johnson.

Fred Harvey Houses of the Southwest (NM) (Images of America)

Richard Melzer

Fred Harvey Houses of the Southwest (NM) (Images of America) Richard Melzer Amazon Price: $14.95
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Editorial Review:

The Fred Harvey name will forever be associated with the high-quality restaurants, hotels, and resorts situated along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway in the American Southwest. The Fred Harvey Company surprised travelers, who were accustomed to dingy beaneries staffed with rough waiters, by presenting attractive, courteous servers known as the Harvey Girls. Today many Harvey Houses serve as museums, offices, and civic centers throughout the Southwest. Only a few Harvey Houses remain as first-class hotels, and they are located at the Grand Canyon, in Winslow, Arizona, and in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

With Picks, Shovels, & Hope: The CCC and Its Legacy on the Colorado Plateau

Wayne K. Hinton, Elizabeth A. Green

With Picks, Shovels, & Hope: The CCC and Its Legacy on the Colorado Plateau Wayne K. Hinton, Elizabeth A. Green Amazon Price: $19.80
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A survey replete with fine color photos of Colorado natural landscapes 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

While WITH PICKS, SHOVELS AND HOPE: THE CCC AND ITS LEGACY ON THE COLORADO PLATEAU will likely be a top pick for Colorado libraries, any interested in public lands management, Depression-era history, or the Civilian Conservation Corps will find this a key historical guide. It tells the story of a group of young men who worked to restore forests, farmlands and more in America's national public lands, and it provides a survey replete with fine color photos of Colorado natural landscapes, throughout. A fine achievement.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Editorial Review:

In 1933, only days after his inauguration, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt launched a new program, the Civilian Conservation Corps, which put three-quarters of a million young men to work restoring forests and farmland, building infrastructure, and fighting fi res in America s national parks, monuments, and forests. Many workers were sent far from home, including thousands who came west to the Colorado Plateau. In this high, dry, and lonesome setting, they encountered natural beauty unlike anything they had ever seen as well as challenges they could
not have imagined. Incorporating the men s own reminiscences, With Picks, Shovels, and Hope tells their story.

To this day, visitors reap the rewards of the CCC s work. With Picks, Shovels, and Hope reveals how our public lands in the Colorado Plateau came to be the magnifi cent, visitor-friendly places they are. Dozens of beautiful color photographs and
historical black-and-whites illuminate this engaging history.

Texas Devils: Rangers and Regulars on the Lower Rio Grande, 1846-1861

Michael L. Collins

Texas Devils: Rangers and Regulars on the Lower Rio Grande, 1846-1861 Michael L. Collins Amazon Price: $17.79
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A fresh perspective on the Texas Rangers 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Dr. Mike Collins offers the reader a first rate scholarly treatment of the subject matter. In this book the reader is transported back to a time in Texas history where myth and legand are fleshed out in a whole new light. The reader will have an accurate account of the Rangers and Regulars for the first time. The Rangers have often been portrayed in lore and film as tall men in the saddle wearing white hats coming to the rescue of the praire family being threated by the Indians or rogue Mexican bandits and outlaws. Not the case all the time! Dr. Collins tells the reader what really occurred back then.

In the book you will find some very rare, never before published photos of men like John S."Rip" Ford and Juan N. Cortina the "Red Robber" who were Texas legends. The reader will also gain a new perspective on the Anglo-Texans and how different they are betrayed in 'Texas Devils' compared to other works like Walter Prescott Webb's "The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defence" which by many is considered the definitive work on the subject. Dr. Collins' new scholarship on the Anglo-Texans alone will undoubiedly raise some discussion critcism in the academic world of Texas history.

It is my belief that 'Texas Devils' will stand the test of time and will f

Editorial Review:

Rather than bringing peace to the region, the Texas Rangers contributed to the violence and were often brutal in their injustices against Spanish-speaking inhabitants, who dubbed them los diablos Tejanos - the Texas devils.

In revealing a barbaric code of conduct on the Rio Grande frontier, Collins shows that much of the Ranger Myth doesn't hold up to close historical scrutiny.

Salt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande (Canseco-Keck History)

Paul Cool

Salt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande (Canseco-Keck History) Paul Cool Amazon Price: $16.47
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The El Paso Salt War of 1877 has gone down in history as the spontaneous "action of a mindless rabble," but as author Paul Cool deftly demonstrates, the episode was actually an insurgency, "the product of a deliberate, community-based decision squarely in the tradition of the American nation's original fight for self-government."

The PaseƱos (local Mexican Americans) had held common ownership of the immense salt lakes at the base of the Guadalupe Mountains since the time of Spanish rule. They believed their title was confirmed in the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. However, to the American businessmen who saw in the white expanse a cash crop that could make them rich in the years following the American Civil War, ownership appeared up for grabs. After years of struggle among Anglo politicians and speculators eager to seize the lakes, an Austin banker staked a legal claim in 1877, and his son-in-law, Charles Howard, started to enforce it. Cool chronicles the ensuing popular uprising that disrupted established governmental authority in El Paso for twelve weeks.

Unique features of this pioneering book include the author's employment of previously untapped sources and the first thorough and systematic use of familiar ones, notably the government report El Paso Troubles in Texas, to create this detailed study of the war. First-person accounts from reports and newspaper items create a landmark day-by-day account of the San Elizario battle, including the location of the Texas Ranger positions.

This fast-paced account not only corrects the record of this historical episode but will also resonate in the context of today's racial and ethnic tensions along the U.S.-Mexico border.


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