Authoritative guide to everything in print about lawmen and the lawless—from Billy the Kid to the painted ladies of frontier cow towns. Nearly 2,500 entries, taken from newspapers, court records, and more.

An annotated listing of over fifty books judged by the author to be the best examples of Texas literature; arranged alphabetically by title.

This collection of fifty outlaw tales includes well-knowns such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Frank and Jesse James, Belle Starr (and her dad), and Pancho Villa, along with a fair smattering of women, organized crime bosses, smugglers, and of course the usual suspects: highwaymen, bank and train robbers, cattle rustlers, snake-oil salesmen, and horse thieves. Men like Henry Brown and Burt Alvord worked on both sides of the law either at different times of their lives or simultaneously. Clever shyster Soapy Smith and murderer Martin Couk survived by their wits, while the outlaw careers of the dimwitted DeAutremont brothers and bigmouthed Diamondfield Jack were severely limited by their intellect, or lack thereof. Nearly everyone in these pages was motivated by greed, revenge, or a lethal mixture of the two. The most bloodthirsty of the bunch, such as the heartless (and, some might argue, soulless) Annie Cook and trigger-happy Augustine Chacón, surely had evil written into their very DNA.

Literary histories, of course, do not have a reason for being unless there exists the literature itself. This volume, perhaps more than others of its kind, is an expression of appreciation for the talented and dedicated literary artists who ignored the odds, avoided temptations to write for popularity or prestige, and chose to write honestly about the American West, believing that experiences long knowns to be of historical importance are also experiences that need and deserve a literature of importance.

"This immense book, by a noted bibliographer of the West, is beyond question the fairest, most complete and most learned evaluation of printed references to western outlaws to appear until now....It will stand for many years, solid as a rock amid the flooding maelstrom of western myth and legend, pointing up the truth about those men of the past who lived by their wits and their guns. It will be impossible for anyone studying that era and such men to do so without reference to this volume."—Los Angeles Times "Adams turns again to the books and histories of the western gunmen and outlaws and critically examines 425 titles, most of which rate as ’burs’ under his saddle. Ramon Adams’ plea is that the writers must stop compounding each other’s errors into legend. In this book, with great skill and without malice, he has pointed out past mistakes. His book should be in the essential baggage of every writer on western outlaws and on every library shelf."—American West "The value of this book to writers and historians of the badman tradition cannot be overestimated, for Adams has replaced rumors, myths, and falsehoods with documented historical facts. It is a book for all conscientious students of and writers on the American West; henceforth, any writer of ’authentic Western history’ who refuses to check with Adams should be, as the judge said to Billy the Kid in one legend, 'hanged by the neck until dead, dead, dead.'"—Southwest Review