John W. (Jack) Swilling, the founder of Phoenix, is also "the most lied about man" in the history of Arizona Territory. His reputation was fatally injured when he was wrongfully accused of stagecoach robbery and died in Yuma County Jail before he could have a trial.

Yesterday I was delirious, and the day before that, or several before that. Tonight, though, I seem to be aware of everything I’ve ever known . . . . It’s dark, double dark because of the mist that August steams from the Colorado. Yet I can see almost very place I’ve ever been . . . All the men I liked are having drinks with me or yarning around campfires scattered from the Appalachians to the Pacific Coast. All the enemies I’ve fought are visible beyond the muxxles of guns or the points of knives . . . All of the women I’ve wigwamed with, including the two who demanded the law’s blessing, are either smiling or showing they wished they never met me . . . But I could never really belong to civilization, for once I hand helped to create it, I yearned for a place on which it hadn’t laid an ordering hand.

Part of the self-image of Phoenix is that the city has no history and that anything of importance happened yesterday. Also that Phoenix, the Arizona state capital, is a "clean" city (despite a past of police corruption and social oppression). The "real" Phoenix, easygoing, sun-drenched, a place of ever-expanding development and economic growth, guarantees, it is said, an enviable lifestyle, low taxes, and unfettered personal freedom and opportunity. Little of this is true. Phoenix has been described as one of the least sustainable cities in the country. This sixth largest urban area of the United States has an alarmingly superficial and tourism-oriented discourse among its leaders. This book examines a series of narrative works (novels, theater, chronicles, investigative reporting, personal accounts, editorial cartooning, even a children's television program) that question this discourse in a frequently stinging fashion. The works examined are anchored in a critical understanding of the dominant urban myths of Greater Phoenix, and an awareness of how all the newness, modernity and fun-in-the-sun mentality mask a uniquely dystopian human experience.

Tells the remarkable story of John William "Jack" Swilling, an Arizona pioneer who established mines, built roads and laid out cities, until he was falsely accused of a stagecoach robbery.

Elected for two-year terms, frontier sheriffs were the principal peace-keepers in counties that were often larger than New England states. As officers of the court, they defended settlers and protected their property from the ever-present violence on the frontier. Their duties ranged from tracking down stagecoach robbers and serving court warrants to locking up drunks and quelling domestic disputes.The reality of their job embraced such mandane duties as being jail keepers, tax collectors, quarantine inspectors, court-appointed executioners, and dogcatchers.