Download or read book The Real Dirt on America s Frontier Legends written by Jim Motavalli and published by GibbsSmith.ORM. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn the truth behind the famous characters of the Wild West—and how the legends got it wrong—in this lively history that separates fact from fiction. The historic figures of the Western frontier have fascinated us for generations. But in many cases, the stories we know about them are little more than inventions. Popular legend won’t tell you, for instance, that David Crockett was a congressman, or that Daniel Boone was a Virginia legislator. Thanks to penny dreadfuls, Wild West shows, sensationalist newspaper stories, and tall tales told by the explorers themselves, what we know of these men and women is often more fiction than fact. The Real Dirt on America's Frontier Legends separates fact from fiction, showing the legends and the evidence side-by-side to give readers the real story of the old West. Here you’ll discover the fascinating truth about Lewis and Clark, Daniel Boone, “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Calamity Jane, Kit Carson, Davy Crocket, and many others.

Download or read book The Real Dirt on America s Frontier Outlaws written by Jim Motavalli and published by Gibbs Smith. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn the real stories behind the infamous renegades of the West with “Motavalli’s entertaining treatment of this bunch of baddies” (HistoryNet.com). The rebels and bandits of the American West—like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—have always made for thrilling tales of gunfights, heists, and outlaws. From the beginning, penny dreadfuls, Wild West shows, dime novels, and urban legends romanticized and magnified these renegades and their wild American spirits. These tales, however, don’t capture the truth of the West’s outlaws—nor do we hear about other lawless individuals, such as Pearl Hart, Belle Starr, or the Bloody Espinosas. Jim Motavalli returns with The Real Dirt on America’s Frontier Outlaws to give a real and more inclusive look at the old West and the dangerous figures that immortalized it.

Download or read book Real Dirt on America s Frontier Outlaws written by James Motavalli and published by Gibbs Smith. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The vicious bad guys and bandits of the American West have always made for thrilling tales of gunfights, heists, and outlaws. From the beginning, penny dreadfuls, Wild West shows, dime novels, and urban legends romanticized and magnified these renegades and their wild frontier spirits. We still get chills down our spines from these tales, which are more fiction than fact. The Real Dirt on America's Frontier Outlaws separates myth from truth, showing the legends and the evidence side by side to give readers the real story of the Wild West and the dangerous figures who immortalized it. Learn the facts about Billy the Kid, Black Bart, John Wesley Hardin, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy as well as some lesser known evildoers such as Isom Dart, Cherokee Bill, The Bloody Espinosas, and Hoodoo Brown among others."--from cover.

Download or read book The Making of Legends written by Mark Dugan and published by Swallow Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing mainly from unpublished materials on frontier history and people, the author recounts legendary law-breaking figures from Pennsylvania to California. Each of the 11 chapters is devoted to an outlaw or outlaw family in a specific U.S. state. In addition to the lesser known legends, he includes the story of Wyatt Earp (and the Earp family), in his post OK Corral years in Idaho's Coeur d'Alene Mountains. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Legends of the Wild West written by Robert Edelstein and published by Centennial Books. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For several hundred years, the West had been the land of dreams, an extraordinary region of hope, expansion and opportunity where European countries—and then the young USA itself—sent their finest explorers to plant seeds in a seemingly untapped, open landscape. This spirit captured the popular imagination in the Wild West, those raucous 30 years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of a new century. Within these pages, readers will explore true tales of rebels and heroes such as General George Custer, Buffalo Bill, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Annie Oakley, and Sitting Bull, among others. The Wild West was the American Dream on steroids. It was an age of gunfights and gold rushes, cowboys and Comanches, with the likes of Buffalo Bill, Jesse James and Billy the Kid making their names. It forged extraordinary legends and even bigger lies, with everything fueled by dime novels written back East that encouraged folks to grab their share of a promise that was difficult for this hard land to keep. This book looks at all these mythical characters, the start of the railroad across the nation, the cost it all dealt to the Native Americans whose land was lost, and the way Hollywood still keeps the dream alive. As historian Richard White says, “People could go west and no matter their failures elsewhere, they had an opportunity to remake themselves. It’s a symbol for a kind of individualism that actually doesn’t exist in the West, but mythically it does.”

Download or read book Groundless written by Gregory Evans Dowd and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2016-01-15 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fascinating—and troubling—story of powerful rumors that circulated and influential legends that arose in early America. Why did Elizabethan adventurers believe that the interior of America hid vast caches of gold? Who started the rumor that British officers purchased revolutionary white women’s scalps, packed them by the bale, and shipped them to their superiors? And why are people today still convinced that white settlers—hardly immune as a group to the disease—routinely distributed smallpox-tainted blankets to the natives? Rumor—spread by colonists and Native Americans alike—ran rampant in early America. In Groundless, historian Gregory Evans Dowd explores why half-truths, deliberate lies, and outrageous legends emerged in the first place, how they grew, and why they were given such credence throughout the New World. Arguing that rumors are part of the objective reality left to us by the past—a kind of fragmentary archival record—he examines how uncertain news became powerful enough to cascade through the centuries. Drawing on specific case studies and tracing recurring rumors over many generations, Dowd explains the seductive power of unreliable stories in the eastern North American frontiers from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. The rumors studied here—some alluring, some frightening—commanded attention and demanded action. They were all, by definition, groundless, but they were not all false, and they influenced the classic issues of historical inquiry: the formation of alliances, the making of revolutions, the expropriation of labor and resources, and the origins of war.

Download or read book Black Gun Silver Star written by Art T. Burton and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022-09 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Story of Oklahoma, Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves appears as the "most feared U.S. marshal in the Indian country." That Reeves was also an African American who had spent his early life enslaved in Arkansas and Texas made his accomplishments all the more remarkable. Black Gun, Silver Star sifts through fact and legend to discover the truth about one of the most outstanding peace officers in late nineteenth-century America--and perhaps the greatest lawman of the Wild West era. Bucking the odds ("I'm sorry, we didn't keep Black people's history," a clerk at one of Oklahoma's local historical societies answered one query), Art T. Burton traces Reeves from his days of slavery to his Civil War soldiering to his career as a deputy U.S. marshal out of Fort Smith, Arkansas, when he worked under "Hanging Judge" Isaac C. Parker. Fluent in Creek and other regional Native languages, physically powerful, skilled with firearms, and a master of disguise, Reeves was exceptionally adept at apprehending fugitives and outlaws and his exploits were legendary in Oklahoma and Arkansas. In this new edition Burton traces Reeves's presence in the national media of his day as well as his growing modern presence in popular media such as television, movies, comics, and video games.

Download or read book The Cowboy Legend written by John Jennings and published by West. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Before Owen Wister's publication of The Virginian in 1902, the image of the cowboy was essentially that of the dime novel. This title details the evidence that Everett Johnson a cowboy from Virginia who had been a friend of Wister's in Wyoming in the 1880s, was the initial and prime inspiration for Wister's cowboy.

Download or read book Re living the American Frontier written by Nancy Reagin and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2021-12 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who owns the West? -- Buffalo Bill and Karl May : the origins of German Western fandom -- A wall runs through it : western fans in the two Germanies -- Little houses on the prairie -- "And then the American Indians came over" : fan responses to indigenous resurgence and political change -- Indians into Confederates : historical fiction fans, reenactors, and living history.

Download or read book The Frontier in American Culture written by Richard White and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1994-10-17 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Log cabins and wagon trains, cowboys and Indians, Buffalo Bill and General Custer. These and other frontier images pervade our lives, from fiction to films to advertising, where they attach themselves to products from pancake syrup to cologne, blue jeans to banks. Richard White and Patricia Limerick join their inimitable talents to explore our national preoccupation with this uniquely American image. Richard White examines the two most enduring stories of the frontier, both told in Chicago in 1893, the year of the Columbian Exposition. One was Frederick Jackson Turner's remarkably influential lecture, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"; the other took place in William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's flamboyant extravaganza, "The Wild West." Turner recounted the peaceful settlement of an empty continent, a tale that placed Indians at the margins. Cody's story put Indians—and bloody battles—at center stage, and culminated with the Battle of the Little Bighorn, popularly known as "Custer's Last Stand." Seemingly contradictory, these two stories together reveal a complicated national identity. Patricia Limerick shows how the stories took on a life of their own in the twentieth century and were then reshaped by additional voices—those of Indians, Mexicans, African-Americans, and others, whose versions revisit the question of what it means to be an American. Generously illustrated, engagingly written, and peopled with such unforgettable characters as Sitting Bull, Captain Jack Crawford, and Annie Oakley, The Frontier in American Culture reminds us that despite the divisions and denials the western movement sparked, the image of the frontier unites us in surprising ways.

Download or read book The Way West written by James A. Crutchfield and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-05-16 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of America is, at its core, the story of the American West. In this new volume from the Western Writers of America, readers are taken deep into the true stories that helped America form its identity, and the people that embodied its essence. James A. Crutchfield, a long-time WWA Secretary-Treasurer and seasoned historian, has assembled a remarkable cadre of contributors in The Way West. Included are winners of the Owen Wister Award, given for lifetime achievement in literature on the West: * David Dary explores the network of trails that lead explorers West * Bill Gulick recalls the Steamboat days of the Pacific Northwest * Leon Claire Metz goes deep into John Wesley Hardin's world * Robert M. Utley shows us the true faces of the Texas Rangers * Dale L. Walker takes us on a tour of the final resting places of forty of the West's most celebrated figures. The Way West covers many of the now obscure individuals and long-lost tales of our storied past and gives new insights into famous characters and events of this legendary era. So join the Western Writers of America on a journey back in time and lose yourself in the colorful history of the American West.

Download or read book Daniel Boone written by John Mack Faragher and published by Holt Paperbacks. This book was released on 1993-11-15 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History for 1993 In the first and most reliable biography of Daniel Boone in more than fifty years, award-winning historian Faragher brilliantly portrays America's famous frontier hero. Drawing from popular narrative, the public record, scraps of documentation from Boone's own hand, and a treasure of reminiscence gathered by nineteenth-century antiquarians, Faragher uses the methods of new social history to create a portrait of the man and the times he helped shape. Blending themes from a much vitalized Western and frontier history with the words and ideas of ordinary people, Faragher has produced a book that will stand as the definitive life of Daniel Boone for decades to come, and one that illuminates the frontier world of Boone like no other.

Download or read book Forward Drive written by Jim Motavalli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive account of the past, present and future of the automobile examines the key trends, key technologies and key players involved in the race to develop clean, environmentally friendly vehicles that are affordable and that do not compromise on safety or design. Undertaking a rigorous interrogation of our global dependency on oil, the author demonstrates just how unwise and unnecessary this is in light of current developments such as the fuel cell revolution and the increasing viability of hybrid cars, which use both petrol and electricity - innovations that could signal a new era of clean, sustainable energy. The arguments put forward draw on support from an eclectic range of sources - including industry insiders, scientists, economists and environmentalists - to make for an enlightening read.

Download or read book The Weird Wild West written by Sean McLachlan and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts of the legends *Includes a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents Space may be the final frontier, but no frontier has ever captured the American imagination like the "Wild West," which still evokes images of dusty cowboys, outlaws, gunfights, gamblers, and barroom brawls over 100 years after the West was settled. A constant fixture in American pop culture, the 19th century American West continues to be vividly and colorful portrayed not just as a place but as a state of mind. Even for those who travel through the West today, there are plenty of traces of the old times. Ghost towns still stand in remote parts of the desert and prairie, Native American rock art still tell their mute legends, and old prospectors' mines still dot the hillsides. Even some of the places' names, such as Bloody Basin, Arizona and Soldier's Hill, New Mexico, have their stories to tell. In November 2014, one lucky archaeologist at Nevada's Great Basin National Park spotted an old rifle leaning against a pine tree; the sun and wind had weathered the wooden stock until it was as gray as the tree trunk, making it almost invisible to passersby. When the gun was examined, it turned out to be a Winchester rifle. The serial number was still legible and records showed that it had been manufactured and shipped in 1882. Some prospector or hunter had set the rifle against a tree more than a century ago and never came back for it. It had been leaning there ever since. As popular as works about the West remain today, the Wild West captured the imagination of people all the way back to the days when it really was wild. Even in the 19th century, its fame spread thanks to dime novels, travelogues, Wild West shows, and theater plays, and people were thrilled by tales of exploration and gunfights. Naturally, in the process of settling the frontier, the adventures contained countless numbers of strange stories, ranging from tales of monsters and lost mines to those about hidden cities and men coming back from the dead. It was a vast, unexplored country, and many mysteries could hide in the unmapped mountain ranges and seemingly endless plains. The Weird Wild West: Tall Tales and Legends about the Frontier is a collection of tales about America's frontier that range from the possible to the downright ridiculous. Some are adaptations of old folk tales immigrants brought with them or creations of overly eager newspaper reporters, but many have their basis in fact. Along with pictures and a bibliography, you will learn about the Weird Wild West like never before, in no time at all.

Download or read book The True Tales of The Most Famous Frontiersmen written by Charles Haven Ladd Johnston and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2023-11-22 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of biographies of valiant and daring adventurers, who were among the early settlers of the Wild West. These men were real scouts and trappers, for they lived in the wilds and had to know how to shoot a rifle; how to trap; and how to camp in whatever place night happened to overtake them. Biographies presented in this book are accurate histories of several important frontiersmen and heroes of the border. These stories are all true and are vouched for by early historians. Contents: Daniel Morgan: The Famous Virginian Rifleman, and His Adventures with the Indian Bear James Harrod: Founder of Harrodsburg, Kentucky, and Famous Scout of the Frontier Robert McLellan: Pluckiest of the Early Pioneers Colonel Benjamin Logan: The Intrepid Fighter of the Kentucky Frontier George Rogers Clarke: Famous Leader of the Borderland of Kentucky John Slover: Scout under Crawford and Hero of Extraordinary Adventures Lewis Wetzel: Heroic Virginia Frontiersman and Implacable Enemy of the Redskins Samuel Colter: And His Wonderful Race for Life Meshack Browning: The Celebrated Bear Hunter of the Alleghanies "Bill" Bent: Hero of the Old Santa Fé Trail Thomas Eddie: The Last of the Old School Trappers Jim Bridger: Founder of Bridger, Wyoming, and Famous Indian Fighter "Old Bill" Williams: The Famous Log Rider of Colorado "Big Foot" Wallace: Noted Ranger on the Texan Frontier Captain Jack Hays: Famous Texan Ranger and Commander of Valiant Border Fighters Bill Hamilton: Famous Trapper, Trader, and Indian Fighter Uncle Job Witherspoon: And His Exciting Adventures with the Blackfeet Henry Shane: Heroic Scout of the plain of Teas Poor Jerry Lane: The Lost Trapper of Wyoming The Song of the Moose

Download or read book The Morgan Men written by William W. Johnstone and published by Pinnacle Books. This book was released on 2024-07-23 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: JOHNSTONE COUNTRY. FAMILY FIRST. EVERYBODY ELSE DIES. Relive the legends of the American West as only William W. and J.A. Johnstone can tell it this ground-breaking saga of warriors and outlaws, lawmen and adventurers, and innocents in need of a hero. FRANK MORGAN, THE LAST GUNFIGHTER: THE DRIFTER Driven out of Colorado by a rich man with a grudge, Frank Morgan’s taken up the one skill that always came easy—gunfighting. Elected to stand in the way of dueling gangs in New Mexico Territory, and with nothing to lose, Morgan’s the last man who will ever back down . . . CONRAD BROWNING, THE LONER When Conrad Browning's wife disappears in the untamed frontier, Conrad finds himself assuming the identity of his famous gunslinging father, Frank Morgan, to find her. So he fakes his own death and starts calling himself the Loner, becoming the deadliest gunfighter this side of his own father . . . THE MORGANS, FATHER AND SON Frank Morgan finds himself ambushed by a ruthless Mexican bandit and his army of thugs in Tucson. The only way out is for Frank’s son, Conrad Browning, to ransom his father free. When a gunslinger father and his prodigal son are at last united, vengeance will be unleashed . . .

Download or read book The End of the Myth written by Greg Grandin and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE A new and eye-opening interpretation of the meaning of the frontier, from early westward expansion to Trump’s border wall. Ever since this nation’s inception, the idea of an open and ever-expanding frontier has been central to American identity. Symbolizing a future of endless promise, it was the foundation of the United States’ belief in itself as an exceptional nation – democratic, individualistic, forward-looking. Today, though, America hasa new symbol: the border wall. In The End of the Myth, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin explores the meaning of the frontier throughout the full sweep of U.S. history – from the American Revolution to the War of 1898, the New Deal to the election of 2016. For centuries, he shows, America’s constant expansion – fighting wars and opening markets – served as a “gate of escape,” helping to deflect domestic political and economic conflicts outward. But this deflection meant that the country’s problems, from racism to inequality, were never confronted directly. And now, the combined catastrophe of the 2008 financial meltdown and our unwinnable wars in the Middle East have slammed this gate shut, bringing political passions that had long been directed elsewhere back home. It is this new reality, Grandin says, that explains the rise of reactionary populism and racist nationalism, the extreme anger and polarization that catapulted Trump to the presidency. The border wall may or may not be built, but it will survive as a rallying point, an allegorical tombstone marking the end of American exceptionalism.