Inventing Wyatt Earp

by Barra, Allen

• ISBN13: 9780803220584
• ISBN10: 0803220588
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-01-01
• Publisher: Bison Books

Summary

On October 26, 1881, Wyatt Earp, his two brothers, and Doc Holliday shot it out with a gang of cattle rustlers near the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. It was over in half a minute, but those thirty violent seconds turned the thirty-three-year-old Wyatt Earp into the stuff of legend. In truth, however, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral neither launched nor climaxed a career that in the course of eighty-two colorful years took Wyatt Earp from an Iowa farm to the movie studios of Hollywood, where he worked as an advisor on Western films. Along the way he saw real-life action as a buffalo hunter, bodyguard, detective, bounty hunter, gambler, boxing referee, prospector, saloon keeper, and, on occasion, a superb lawman. This authoritative biography tells Wyatt Earp's story in all its amazing varietya story the celebrated lawman shares with the likes of Bat Masterson, Earp's colleague on the Dodge City police force; the tubercular, gun-toting southern gentleman Doc Holliday; and Josephine Sarah Marcus, a beautiful Jewish girl from New York City who lived and traveled with Earp throughout the last forty-seven years of his life. Biographer Allen Barra also examines the more fantastic versions of Earp's exploits told during his own lifetime, as well as his incarnations in the myths that have flourished in our national imagination throughout the seventy years since his death.

Author Biography

Allen Barra is a sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, and the New York Sun, and is the author of several books, including Clearing the Bases (available in a Bison Books edition), The Last Coach: A Life of Paul “Bear” Bryant, and the forthcoming Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Bison Books Edition	p. v
Preface	p. 1
Introduction	p. 4
Wyatt: The Odyssey	p. 19
"Bloody Kansas"-Wyatt Earp in Wichita	p. 36
On to Dodge City	p. 54
Tombstone: The Iliad	p. 91
"Three Men Hurled into Eternity"-The Streetfight in Tombstone	p. 139
Wyatt Earp on Trial	p. 178
Wyatt Earp Unleashed: The Vendetta Ride	p. 231
Putting Clothes on a Ghost: The Life and Legend of Doc Holliday	p. 286
The Lion in Autumn	p. 306
Hollywood Gunfighter	p. 329
Print the Legend	p. 375
Wyatt Redux	p. 396
Bibliography	p. 406
Index	p. 413
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