Shares ten stories featuring legendary places, events, and characters from the era of westward expansion.

Much has been written about the west—most of it clouded by exaggeration and fabrication. Since 1953, True West magazine has been devoted to celebrating the West’s true colors, giving the men and women who settled there accurate voices, exploring every triumph and tragedy of their time—and exposing every vice and virtue. True Tales and Amazing Legends of the Old West commemorates these unforgettable cowboys, Indians, and city slickers through a mix of classic histories and brand-new narratives, all illustrated with photographs—many reproduced here for the first time—of the people and places that gave rise to America’s Western mythology. With twenty-six stories that blend fact with folklore, this collection abounds with accounts of the famous and the infamous, including Sacagawea, Wild Bill Hickok, Pancho Villa, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Davy Crockett, and Wyatt Earp. Also here are lesser-known figures whose stories were pivotal to shaping the culture of the era, such as European conquistador Francisco Coronado, rancher “Black Billy” Hill, and fearless lawman Orlando “Rube” Robbins. Other tales recount the wide open plains, lawlessness, drama, mayhem, and promise embodied in the Old West. Whether you’re a history buff, an Old West devotee, or simply someone who is fascinated by the characters of America’s early years, these timeless tales and photographs epitomize the legendary spirit of what it meant to settle the West.

A photo-journalist called Peppercorn, sets off to South Dakota, to find his inner cowboy (and, more prosaically, to write an article on the Buffalo Roundup at Custer State Park for travel magazine Terra Incognita). With a cast of larger-than-life charactersincluding Peppercorns cousin, Saltzman, lecturer in (and soon-to-be saviour of) the University of St. Albans School of American Studies; Mercy Sweetbriar, Rapid Citys representative from the Department of Tourism, and runner-up in the Appearance, Personality, and Photogenics category in South Dakotas Miss Rodeo contest; and tarted-up trailer trash Miami Bitch, sporting denim hotpants and deep-pan cleavageand combining fact, fantasy, and fiction, Clive Sinclairs True Tales of the Wilde West is a glorious romp through the legends and landscapes of the American West.

"Examines gunfighters in the Wild West, including the typical traits and tools of gunfighters, infamous outlaws, gangs, important lawmen, and how the gun often ruled the Wild West"--Provided by publisher.

The settling of the West in the 19th century is the essential American story, rich in symbolism and full of inspiration. This narrative of intrepid explorers, hardy pioneers seeking a better life, and daring outlaws who flouted authority, defintes the American spirit even today.

For several hundred years, the West had been the land of dreams, an extraordinary region of hope, expansion and opportunity where European countries—and then the young USA itself—sent their finest explorers to plant seeds in a seemingly untapped, open landscape. This spirit captured the popular imagination in the Wild West, those raucous 30 years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of a new century. Within these pages, readers will explore true tales of rebels and heroes such as General George Custer, Buffalo Bill, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Annie Oakley, and Sitting Bull, among others. The Wild West was the American Dream on steroids. It was an age of gunfights and gold rushes, cowboys and Comanches, with the likes of Buffalo Bill, Jesse James and Billy the Kid making their names. It forged extraordinary legends and even bigger lies, with everything fueled by dime novels written back East that encouraged folks to grab their share of a promise that was difficult for this hard land to keep. This book looks at all these mythical characters, the start of the railroad across the nation, the cost it all dealt to the Native Americans whose land was lost, and the way Hollywood still keeps the dream alive. As historian Richard White says, “People could go west and no matter their failures elsewhere, they had an opportunity to remake themselves. It’s a symbol for a kind of individualism that actually doesn’t exist in the West, but mythically it does.”

The 'Wild West' stories of Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone pale in comparison to the incredible story of Las Vegas, New Mexico, for decades considered the most violent community on America's western frontier. In Wildest of the Wild West, popular Western historian Howard Bryan provides a spirited account of the violent, melodramatic, and often bizarre events that centred in and around this small Hispanic farm and ranching community from 1835 to 1915.