From New York Times bestselling author of Forget the Alamo comes an epic reconsideration of the time and place that spawned America’s most legendary gunfighters.
Bryan Burrough will be joined in conversation with celebrated Austin author Stephen Harrigan.
A book signing will follow with books available for purchase on site from BookPeople
The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as the Austin-based Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.
The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild brilliantly sifts the lies from the truth, giving both elements their due. And the truth is sufficiently wild for any but the most unhinged tastes. All the legendary figures are here, and their escapades are told with great flair — good, bad, and ugly. To understand the truth of the Wild West is to understand a crucial dimension of the American story.
Bryan Burrough is the author or co-author of eight books, four of them New York Times bestsellers, including the Wall Street classic Barbarians at the Gate and, most recently, Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. A longtime correspondent at Vanity Fair and now editor at large at Texas Monthly, he lives in Austin.
Stephen Harrigan is a novelist, journalist, historian and screenwriter. His books include the novels The Gates of the Alamo, Remember Ben Clayton, A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, as well as the nonfiction tome Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas.
