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.

The Natchez Trace is remarkable in American history for the legends and tales surrounding it. During the first half of the nineteenth century, travelers--traders, settlers, andøthe occasional war party or fugitive from justice--followed its course from the Appalachians to the lower Mississippi, from Knoxville to Natchez. In this vibrant and energetic account, the author has mined both history and legend for startling tales of the near-mythical thieves, cutthroats, and confidence men once reported to have stalked their unsuspecting victims along this frontier trail--the terrible Harpe brothers, who came to a satisfactorily bad end; Samuel Mason, a thief done in by other thieves; and John Murrell, whose reputed schemes threw the South into a paroxysm of fear. Robert M. Coates retells the stories of these and other "land pirates" in chilling and ominous detail, preserving for us the tales once whispered on the edges of the dark southern woods nearly two centuries ago.

Think gunfighter, and Wyatt Earp or Billy the Kid may come to mind, but what of Jim Moon? Joel Fowler? Zack Light? A host of other figures helped forge the gunfighter persona, but their stories have been lost to time. In a sequel to his Deadly Dozen, celebrated western historian Robert K. DeArment now offers more biographical portraits of lesser-known gunfighters—men who perhaps weren’t glorified in legend or song, but who were rightfully notorious in their day. DeArment has tracked down stories of gunmen from throughout the West—characters you won’t find in any of today’s western history encyclopedias but whose careers are colorfully described here. Photos of the men and telling quotations from primary sources make these characters come alive. In giving these men their due, DeArment takes readers back to the gunfighter culture spawned in part by the upheavals of the Civil War, to a time when deadly duels were part of the social fabric of frontier towns and the Code of the West was real. His vignettes offer telling insights into conditions on the frontier that created the gunfighters of legend. These overlooked shooters never won national headlines but made their own contributions to the blood and thunder of the Old West: people less than legends, but all the more fascinating because they were real. Readers who enjoyed DeArment’s Deadly Dozen will find this book equally captivating—as gripping as a showdown, twelve times over.

In Search of Western Movie Sites is a compilation of 64 articles written for the bi-monthly newsletter Western Clippings by Carlo Gaberscek and Kenny Stier. They are profoundly convinced of the fundamental importance of landscapes and natural exteriors in westerns. These articles are listed regionally, starting with the Southwestern states (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada), progressing to California, the Northwest, Midwest, and Southern states, followed by Canada, and finishing with Mexico. They focus on the making of both A and B-westerns in a single state or a specific area of a state, and contain selected filmographies and detailed information on the locations. They envision a vast atlas of western cinema, a map of both real and imagined places constructed by Hollywood. This book, which includes over 200 stills and photos taken on location, is a guide to thousands of western film locations.

Sifting factual information from among the lies, legends, and tall tales, the lives and battles of gunfighters on both sides of the law are presented in a who's who of the violent West

Outlaws on Horseback concentrates on the long, unbroken chain of crime that began in the late 1850s with the Missouri-Kansas border warfare and ended in Arkansas in 1921 with the killing of Henry Starr, the last of the authentic desperadoes. Harry Sinclair Drago shows links among the men and women who terrorized the Midwest while he squelches the most outlandish tales about them. The guerrilla warfare led by the evil William Quantrill was training for Frank and Jesse James and Cole and Jim Younger. Drago puts their bloody careers in perspective and tracks down the truth about Belle Starr the Bandit Queen, Cherokee Bill, Rose of the Cimarron, and the gangs, including the Daltons and Doolins, that infested the Oklahoma hills. The action moves from the sacking of Lawrence to the raid on Northfield to the shootout at Coffeyville.

"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