Desert Honkytonk: The Story of Tombstone's Bird Cage Theatre [Paperback]

Roger A. Bruns (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2000

Desert Honkytonk tells the story of the Bird Cage Theatre---Tombstone, Arizona's infamous home of western-style vaudeville in the 1880s.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Roger Bruns is Deputy Executive Director of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. He is the author of 14 adult and children's books, including The Bandit Kings: From Jesse James to Pretty Boy Floyd (Crown Publishers, 1995) and Almost History (Hyperion, 2000).

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing (September 29, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555914160
• ISBN-13: 978-1555914165
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,029,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very light reading, April 4, 2002

By A Customer

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This review is from: Desert Honkytonk: The Story of Tombstone's Bird Cage Theatre (Paperback)

This is a pleasant book that makes for mildly enjoyable light reading. It is short, and frequently digresses into the history of Tombstone and its more famous characters and events rather than sticking to the Bird Cage Theater itself. It has one GLARING FLAW. There are exactly two pictures of the Bird Cage Theater in the entire book. Both are very small. One picture of the outside is not even supposed to be a picture of the Bird Cage at all. The theater merely happens to be in the background of a photo of a burro pack train. The only other picture of the theater is a woefully inadequate one of the inside of the theater that is so dark you can see practically nothing. There is no diagram of the floor plan either. I have personally been inside this venerable old theater, so I could draw on that experience. Those readers who have not been there will have a difficult time grasping the ambience of the place, since the photos here are so poor. The author also confuses the reader by giving two dates the theater finally closed. On one page he says 1892, and a few pages later says 1889.