This New York Times' bestseller features the West’s most prominent lawmen and criminals, who tell their stories of fight, death, and survival. In the romantic narrative of the Old West, two larger-than-life characters emerged as the perfect foils for each other—the rampant outlaw and the heroic peace officer. Without the villain, sheriffs would not have needed to uphold the law; and without the sheriff, villains would have had no law to break. Together, both personalities fought, lost, and triumphed amid shootouts, train robberies, and bank holdups against the backdrop of the lawless American frontier. This spectacular New York Times' bestselling collection of true memoirs and autobiographies, told by the very people who lived these criminal and righteous lives during the Old West, reveal the outlaw and peace officer at their worst and best. Watch as Mark Twain introduces notorious gunslinger Jack Slade; hear about Theodore Roosevelt’s encounters with men, women, and game from Roosevelt himself; read sheriff Pat Garrett’s biography of Billy the Kid, the outlaw he killed; and listen as lawmen Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp describe each other in their own accounts. Including other carefully curated stories by Tom Horn, Cole Younger, and more, Outlaws and Peace Officers invokes danger, honor, and the fight for survival during this perilous but exciting chapter in American history.

Standoffs, saloons, and sunsets spring to mind when one envisions the rough and tumble early days of the American frontier.

Sitting tall in the saddle, with a wide-brimmed black hat and twin Colt pistols on his belt, Bass Reeves seemed bigger than life. Outlaws feared him. Law-abiding citizens respected him. As a peace officer, he was cunning and fearless. When a lawbreaker he

This book explores in depth the origins, development, and prospects of outlawry and of the relationship of outlaws to the social conditions of changing times. Throughout American history you will find larger-than-life brigands in every period and every region. Often, because we hunger for simple justice, we romanticize them to the point of being unable to separate fact from fiction. Frank Richard Prassel brings this home in a thorough and fascinating examination of the concept of outlawry from Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, and Blackbeard through Jean Lafitte, Pancho Villa, and Billy the Kid to more modern personalities such as John Dillinger, Claude Dallas, and D. B. Cooper. A separate chapter on molls, plus equal treatment in the histories of gangs, traces women's involvement in outlaw activities. Prassel covers the folklore as well as the facts, even including an appendix of ballads by and about outlaws. He makes clear how this motley group of bandits, pirates, highwaymen, desperadoes, rebels, hoodlums, renegades, gangsters, and fugitives—who stand tall in myth—wither in the light of truth, but flourish in the movies. As he tells the stories, there is little to confirm that Jesse and Frank James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Daltons, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ma Barker, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, Belle Starr, the Apache Kid, or any of the so-called good badmen, did anything that did not enrich or otherwise benefit themselves. But there is plenty of evidence, in the form of slain victims and ruined lives, to show how many ways they caused harm. The Great American Outlaw is as much an excellent survey on the phenomenon as it is a brilliant exposition of the larger than-life figures who created it. Above all, it is a tribute to that aspect of humanity that Americans admire most and that Prassel describes as a willingness "to fight, however hopelessly, against exhibitions of privilege."

nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth. Western historian Robert K. DeArment has tracked down the facts of the mysterious Canton's early life and misdeeds in Texas; his participation in the Johnson County War as an agent of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association; his pursuit of the Daltons, Bill Doolin, and other outlaws in Oklahoma Territory; his experiences as a peace officer and gold prospector in Alaska; his career as a bounty hunter; and his.

Badge and Buckshot is a comprehensive book at many of the once-famous peace officers and outlaws of Old California. Told here for the first time are the true stories of Ben Thorn, the iron-willed but scandal-plagued sheriff of Calaveras County; John C. Boggs, the fast-shooting nemesis of the Tom Bell and Rattlesnake Dick gangs; Ben and Dudley Johnson, the notorious “Tulare Twins”; Kid Thompson, whose train-robbing exploits took place just blocks from present-day Los Angeles film and television studios; and Coates-Frost feud, California’s bloodiest vendetta, which endured more than twenty years and left fourteen men dead. Here, too, are the first complete accounts of Captain Ingram’s Rangers, the band of Confederate guerrillas who raided stagecoaches in California during the Civil War; Steve Venard, the soft-spoken lawman who killed three outlaws in a single gunfight; and the legendary Bill Miner, whose career of banditry spanned almost half a century. The product of more than ten years of painstaking research, Badge and Buckshot recounts one of the forgotten sagas of the Old West, an action-packed tale of shoot-outs, stage holdups, manhunts, and lynchings. At the same time, through extensive use of pioneer newspaper files, court records, and previously unpublished illustrations, it shatters old myths and demonstrates the overall effectiveness of the criminal justice system in Old California. For authentic Americana, Badge and Buckshot is not to be missed.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.