Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 1997
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 1, Winter 1997, pp. 75-76.
Abstract
At first glance and a quick thumb-through, this large 10"x13" edition with its striking full color cover featuring W. C. Wyeth's dramatic painting of Wild Bill Hickok throwing down on a cheat at a gambling table might be considered just another slick picture book on the order of The Gunfighters, one of Time-life's Old West series of a few years back. But knowledgeable readers of factual gunfighter history, recognizing the author's name, would look further. Joseph G. Rosa has written a number of books dealing with Old West gunmen and their weaponry and is the uncontested authority on the life and times of James Butler Hickok.
Unlike the Time-life gunfighter book, produced by a committee and edited by someone with no credentials in the field, The Age of the Gunfighter is much more than a picture collection augmented by a meager, clichéd, and unreliable text. Rosa has introduced into this beautifully illustrated edition cogent accounts of the characters depicted, together with detailed information on the weapons they used. He has quoted freely from obscure contemporary publications, and even the most well-informed aficionado of gun smoke history will find here much that is new and fresh. The book's nearly two hundred pages include four maps and fifty-seven color and 285 black and white illustrations. Featured are two-page color photographs of frontier weapons and artifacts from the collections at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. Interiors of restored buildings in Old Trail Town at Cody are displayed in other brilliant two-page color photographs.
This reviewer hesitates to find fault with so fine a volume, but must point out several errors which should be corrected if, as is likely, The Age of the Gunfighter goes into later printings. A figure identified as Emmett Dalton on page 46 is actually brother Bob. Identification of Jeff Milton and George Scarborough on page 53 is reversed. On the next page Scarborough is described as a "sometime deputy and associate in petty crimes" of John Selman; he was neither. Frank Canton's true name is given as "Joseph" Horner in two places on page 88; it was in fact "Josiah." A figure in a photograph on page 89 identified as Nate Champion is really Tom Gardner. Billy Dixon is incorrectly identified in a group photo on page 107.
Originally published in a 1993 hard cover edition in England, The Age of the Gunfighter is a welcome addition to an affordable paperback list offered by the University of Oklahoma Press. It should be snapped up by anyone interested in the factual history of the Wild West.
Comments
Copyright 1997 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln