Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride [Hardcover]

Michael Wallis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2007

From the best-selling author of Route 66 comes this long-awaited biography of one of America’s most legendary folk heroes.

Award-winning historian Michael Wallis has spent several years re-creating the rich, anecdotal saga of Billy the Kid (1859–1881), a deeply mythologized young man who became a legend in his own time and yet remains an enigma to this day. With the Gilded Age in full swing and the Industrial Revolution reshaping the American landscape, “the Kid,” who was gunned down by Sheriff Pat Garrett in the New Mexico Territory at the age of twenty-one, became a new breed of celebrity outlaw. He arose amid the mystery and myth of the swiftly vanishing frontier and, sensationalized beyond recognition by the tabloids and dime-store romances of the day, emerged as one of the most enduring icons of the American West—not to mention one of Hollywood’s most misrepresented characters. This new biography, filled with dozens of rare images and period photographs, separates myth from reality and presents an unforgettable portrait of this brief and violent life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The boy who would become Billy the Kid (1859–1881) was born Henry McCarty, perhaps in the Irish immigrant wards of New York City. Not much is known about his parents, and it's difficult to trace his whereabouts until his family turned up in Silver City, Colo., in the early 1870s. Both the facts and the legend pick up in 1877, when Henry—already known to some under the alias Kid—shot a man who was bullying him and began a life on the run. Wallis's reconstruction of the Kid's exploits is engrossing. But even more, Wallis (Route 66) shows Billy the Kid as a product of his era, one of profound social dislocation. Billy the Kid was, indeed, only the most legendary of a generation of "desperate men" who knew how to handle a gun. At the same time, a new kind of sensationalist journalism was being created, and reporters were more than happy to contribute to the creation of a myth. Wallis, the host of PBS's new American Roads, writes clean prose, occasionally enlivened by a particularly lovely turn of phrase ("the liquid rustle of cottonwood leaves"). Over the decades, countless books have been written about the infamous outlaw, and this is surely one of the best. 60 illus. (Mar.)
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Review

"It is a moral tale of a kind, to which Michael Wallis has done full justice." Frank McLynn, Literary Review "Following Wallis's search for the real Billy the Kid is a fascinating experience." Elmore Leonard" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1St Edition edition (March 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393060683
• ISBN-13: 978-0393060683
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #444,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best Billy the Kid book in many years., March 6, 2007

By 

J. Jacob Levenson "Levy78" (austin, texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride (Hardcover)

As someone who was born in Southeastern New Mexico and raised in Texas I have been enthralled with Billy the Kid and the events that gave rise to his fame since my earliest memories. I don't consider myself a Billy the Kid scholar, but I have read a dozen or so books, seen most Billy the Kid sites and have spent many hours over the years contemplating the young outlaw's life. Michael Wallis effectively works off the proven facts (which are few)of one Henry McCarty alias Henry Antrim, alias Kid Antrim alias William H. Bonney alias Billy the Kid, to give us a great working backbone with which to study The Kid. When Wallis fills in the holes between the facts, he doesn't lead us on and uses logic and reason to create plausible scenarios based on Billy's time and location to create a fluid line from Billy's youth to his death and beyond. Mr. Wallis substantiates much of what is said in this book by quotes from people that knew and rode with The Kid, newspapers of the time and notes taken from other credible Billy the Kid researchers such as Robert Utley.
Michael Wallis really brings to life the mostly likely childhood The Kid experienced. The author does a superb job of taking the reader back to the Western Frontier of the 1870's. We get an idea of how the times Billy grew up in influenced him and the pivotal events in the young man's life that propelled him down his path, that in retrospect, appears to almost be destiny. The only part of The Endless Ride that perplexed me to a degree is how Wallis manages to only touch on a surface level the events The Kid is most famous for. However, I don't think Wallis' intention was to give an indepth portrayal of The Kid's deeds as an outlaw on the lamb, but rather, approach the story of The Kid, with less study on his events an 'outlaw' and more focus on the creation of Billy in the mind's of people then... and now.
Simply, this is one of, if not the best, Billy the Kid books I have ever read. Wallis' reserach is impeccable and his writing style sophisticated and fluid. Without a doubt, The Endless Ride is the best read yet to give great and accurate insight into Billy before he was 'Billy The Kid', where more than half of the book is focused. This book is a must read for any fan of Billy the Kid and an excellent starting point for any individuals wishing to get swept away in the legend that is The Kid.

44 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tedious and pedantic, July 19, 2007

By 

Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride (Hardcover)

Despite several attempts, in terms of a detailed reading, I didn't make it very far into this book: page 64 to be precise. After that I skimed it and, quite frankly, found nothing worthwhile here.

The author's style is, putting it mildly, bizarre. This is 1871, mind you. No electricity. Few labor saving devices. This is Wichita, Kansas, a place not particularly noted for balmy summer weather. Yet author Wallis has the temerity to write "Life in Wichita may have seemed sweet as huckleberry pie for Catherine McCarty. Her steamy City Laundry did a brisk trade thanks to the bundles of soiled hotel and whorehouse linen . . ." Wallis is describing a tubercular woman performing hard physical labor for long hours in less than a hospitable setting. Sure enough, two pages later Wallis writes "[a] stifling hot laundry was far from the ideal place for someone battling a chronic respiratory illness.
"

Wallis' use - or rather misuse - of language is jarring. In another instance, he has the family of the still young boy who would become the notorious Billy The Kid of "slipping" into a state, as if there was something furtive in their movement. There wasn't and the language is a poor attempt to add drama to an ordinary incident. The device doesn't work no matter how many times it is employed - and it is employed all too often.

Wallis takes off on a rant about and against handguns. There's little sense here. Elizabethans were complaining of violence in the streets just as modern day Houstonians do. The availability of early Colt revolvers had little to do with the sometimes lawless character of Western towns.

Not long after, Wallis complains of vigilante justice which was, in fact, an expression of the civilizing impulse. It may have been rough and ready, but it showed the desire of ordinary people for the protection of law.

Wallis makes many gratuitous comments of this kind. He takes the 19th Century folks to task for their lack of environmental sensitivity, ethnic tolerance and so on.

By page 64, I'd had it.

There are many other books available on Billy The Kid, which stick to their subject, avoid language eccentricity and don't try to apply 21st Century political correctness to the 19th Century.

Jerry

17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Impressed, June 6, 2007

By 

Impecunious fan (Lakeville, MN USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride (Hardcover)

To raise a dissenting voice, I found this book to be a journalistic deluge of speculation presented as fact, irrelevant padding (a whole chapter on P. T. Barnum?), and inaccurate factoids (Percy Bysshe Shelley died of TB?) used to fill out the narrative. _The West of Billy the Kid_ is much, much better and more readable.