Learn the real stories behind the infamous renegades of the West with “Motavalli’s entertaining treatment of this bunch of baddies” (HistoryNet.com). The rebels and bandits of the American West—like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—have always made for thrilling tales of gunfights, heists, and outlaws. From the beginning, penny dreadfuls, Wild West shows, dime novels, and urban legends romanticized and magnified these renegades and their wild American spirits. These tales, however, don’t capture the truth of the West’s outlaws—nor do we hear about other lawless individuals, such as Pearl Hart, Belle Starr, or the Bloody Espinosas. Jim Motavalli returns with The Real Dirt on America’s Frontier Outlaws to give a real and more inclusive look at the old West and the dangerous figures that immortalized it.

"The vicious bad guys and bandits of the American West have always made for thrilling tales of gunfights, heists, and outlaws. From the beginning, penny dreadfuls, Wild West shows, dime novels, and urban legends romanticized and magnified these renegades and their wild frontier spirits. We still get chills down our spines from these tales, which are more fiction than fact. The Real Dirt on America's Frontier Outlaws separates myth from truth, showing the legends and the evidence side by side to give readers the real story of the Wild West and the dangerous figures who immortalized it. Learn the facts about Billy the Kid, Black Bart, John Wesley Hardin, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy as well as some lesser known evildoers such as Isom Dart, Cherokee Bill, The Bloody Espinosas, and Hoodoo Brown among others."--from cover.

Learn the truth behind the famous characters of the Wild West—and how the legends got it wrong—in this lively history that separates fact from fiction. The historic figures of the Western frontier have fascinated us for generations. But in many cases, the stories we know about them are little more than inventions. Popular legend won’t tell you, for instance, that David Crockett was a congressman, or that Daniel Boone was a Virginia legislator. Thanks to penny dreadfuls, Wild West shows, sensationalist newspaper stories, and tall tales told by the explorers themselves, what we know of these men and women is often more fiction than fact. The Real Dirt on America's Frontier Legends separates fact from fiction, showing the legends and the evidence side-by-side to give readers the real story of the old West. Here you’ll discover the fascinating truth about Lewis and Clark, Daniel Boone, “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Calamity Jane, Kit Carson, Davy Crocket, and many others.

"The history of how order came to the Forks of the Llano River, the outlaw frontier of western Texas Hill Country. Provides insight into outlaw families as well as law officers and citizens who opposed them"--Provided by publisher.

In the vein of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief and Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox, journalist Emily Brady journeys into a secretive subculture — built on marijuana. Outside the United States, the words ‘Humboldt County’ mean little. Inside the United States — the home of the war on drugs — those words might prompt a knowing grin. For many people, the name is infamous, and yet the place and its inhabitants have been nearly impenetrable. Until now. Humboldt is a narrative exploration of this insular community in northern California, which for nearly 40 years has existed primarily on the cultivation and sale of marijuana. It’s a place where business is done with thick wads of cash, and savings are buried in the backyard. In Humboldt County, marijuana supports everything from fire departments to schools. As legalisation looms, the community stands at a crossroads, and its inhabitants are deeply divided — some want to claim their rightful heritage as master growers and have their livelihood legitimised, while others want to continue reaping the inflated profits of the black market. Emily Brady spent a year living with the highly secretive residents of Humboldt County, and her cast of eccentric, intimately drawn characters take us into a fascinating alternate universe. It’s the story of a small town that became dependent on a forbidden plant, and of how everything is changing as marijuana goes mainstream.

A seasoned historian assembles a remarkable cadre of authors, who reveal forgotten, true stories of the American frontier.

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."