Hankering for a mostly true tale about the hard-living desperadoes who inhabited America's desert Southwest in the mid-1800s? This biography of the ill-fated gunslinger Billy, the Kid was written by Pat Garrett, the sheriff who shot Billy down. Although some historians now question the veracity of some of the self-aggrandizing bluster Garrett and his ghostwriter included in the book, The Authentic Life of Billy, The Kid is a wonderful read for aficionados of the anything-goes Wild West.

"The Way to the West" tells the story of the opening of the west, including the accounts of three early Americans Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Kit Carson. "The Story of the Cowboy" is a historical book about the cowboy in the American West close to the end of 19th century. "The Story of the Outlaw" is a study of the western desperado, with historical narratives of famous outlaws, the stories of noted border wars, vigilante movements, and armed conflicts on the frontier, including the pr...

After a nomadic childhood, Charles Siringo signed on as a teenage cowboy for the noted Texas cattle king, Shanghai Pierce, and began a life that embraced all the hard work, excitement, and adventure readers today associate with the cowboy era. He "rid the Chisholm trail," driving 2,500 heads of cattle from Austin to Kansas; knew Tascosa**—now a historic monument—**when it was home to raucous saloons, red light districts, and a fair share of violence; and led a posse of cow...

Despite the countless books and films devoted to him, Billy the Kid remains one of the most elusive figures of the Old West. Now, award-winning western historian Frederick Nolan has scoured the published literature to offer this well-rounded compendium on the life and times of William H. Bonney.The Billy the Kid Reader contains some of the best articles on the Kid—including gems no longer in print. From the first dime novel that appeared shortly after his death to the rese...

In 1854, a Cherokee Indian called Yellow Bird (better known as John Rollin Ridge) launched in this book the myth of Joaquin Murieta, based on the California criminal career of a 19th century Mexican bandit. Today this folk hero has been written into state histories, sensationalized in books, poems, and articles throughout America, Spain, France, Chile, and Mexico, and made into a motion picture.The Ridge account is here reproduced from the only known copy of the first edition, owne...

The true story of Billy the Kid, the noted desperado of the southwest, whose deeds of daring and blood made his name a terror in New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico in the 1870's. The book was written by the man who shot Billy the Kid himself--Pat Garrett.

**The first novel to feature a Mexican American hero: an adventure tale about Mexicans rising up against U.S. rule in California, based on the real-life bandit who inspired the creation of Zorro, the Lone Ranger, and BatmanWith a new foreword by Diana Gabaldon, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone and the rest of the Outlander seriesA Penguin Classic**An action-packed blend of folk tale, romance, epic, and myt...

The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid is a biography of William H. Bonney a.k.a. Billy the Kid written by sheriff Pat Garrett of Lincoln County, New Mexico. Garrett shot and killed Bonney in 1881.

Captain Bill McDonald (1852-1918) was the most prominent of the "Four Great Captains" of Texas Ranger history. His career straddled the changing scene from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. In 1891 McDonald became captain of Company B of the Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers. "Captain Bill" and the Rangers under his command took part in a number of incidents from the Panhandle region to South Texas: the Fitzsimmons-Maher prizefight in El Paso, the W...

Miguel Antonio Otero served as the first Hispanic governor of the U.S. Territory of New Mexico, from 1897 to 1906. He was appointed to the office by President William McKinley. Long after his retirement from politics, Governor Otero wrote and published his memoirs in three volumes, a major contribution to New Mexico history. But he also published a biography in 1936 titled “The Real Billy the Kid.” His aim in that book, he proclaimed, was to write the Kid’s story “without embellishment, ba...

Newspaper reports of Jack the Ripper, Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and others compiled by the New York Times–bestselling author.Former detective and bestselling author Mike Rothmiller has brought together classic works of journalism that will take the reader on a fascinating journey back in time to when these horrific tales mesmerized a nation. Some may find these articles and their descriptions of people and crimes shocking by today's ...

This colorful memoir brings the Texas frontier to life, from smuggling adventures to fighting in the Texas Revolution and serving as a Texas Ranger.Having left Kentucky at nineteen, Noah Smithwick arrived in Texas in 1827 to seek his fortune in a "lazy man's paradise." He left in 1861, when his opposition to secession took him to California. Looking back at that time, blind and nearing ninety, Smithwick recounted the story to his daughter—and so came to be this inv...