Doc Holliday (Bison Book) [Paperback]

John Myers Myers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1973 | Series: Bison Book

"John Myers Myers has written Doc's story with a skill that matches the sureness of a bullet from Doc's gun."-Dallas Times Herald. "As for the general reader, he'll eat this up and beg for more."-San Francisco Chronicle.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In the figure of the old-time gamblin’ man and cold killer, John Myers has found a subject perfectly suited to his talents and his methods. . . . The result is a solid though lively biography. . . . As for the general reader, interested in the old West, he’ll eat this up and beg for more."—San Francisco Chronicle

(San Francisco Chronicle )

"Adds an authentic shaft of light to the dark history of gun play in the West."—Chicago Sunday Tribune

(Chicago Sunday Tribune )

"John Myers Myers has written Doc’s story with a skill that matches the sureness of a bullet from Doc’s gun. It is a bull’s-eye hit."—Dallas Times Herald

(Dallas Times Herald )

About the Author

Poet, novelist, and historian, John Myers Myers is the author of sixteen books, including The Alamo and The Saga of Hugh Glass: Pirate, Pawnee, and Mountain Man, both available as Bison Books.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books (August 1, 1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803257813
• ISBN-13: 978-0803257818
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #837,496 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Typical Myers biography, July 28, 2002

By 

Mark Pollock "educator" (Davis, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Doc Holliday (Bison Book) (Paperback)

I love John Myers Myers, and his writing style, but I understand how many people can be turned off by it.

First of all, this is not so such a biography of Doc Holliday as Myers WRITING a biography about Holliday. What I mean by this is that Myers is a VERY self-indulgent writer. He loves to play around with words, include quick humorous phrases on a whim, and make self-referencial comments throughout any book he writes, which includes this one.

His research tends to be strong, and he tends to take rather radical views of his topics, views which challenge what is normally held as the truth about his subjects. (His book on the San Francisco vigilante committee days completely deflates the idea that the vigilantes stood for anything other than their own personal vendettas and profits.)

This book is pretty tame by Myers conventions, but is still a bit indulgent. It's a good read, but do expect to have to re-read pages, get side-tracked by witty comments, and indulge in wordplay. That's the Myers way!

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A '50's look at an enduring outlaw legend., August 8, 1997

By 

[e-mail] - See all my reviews

This review is from: Doc Holliday (Bison Book) (Paperback)

I've been on a '50's book binge lately; I'm not sure why.
Part of it is that I've been in the mood to read about bad
boys, and no recent decade was so friendly to really bad
boys as the '50's.

In that kind of mood, you might want to bone up on your outlaw
history, and who better to fill your bad boy yearnings than
the gentleman outlaw, John Henry (Doc) Holliday? John Myers
Myers wrote Doc Holliday in 1955, and it remains the most
even-handed, insightful and just plain enjoyable book about
Doc you're likely to read. Part of the fun is gleaning
elusive tidbits of the real Holliday's personality -
reading, for example, a Denver reporter's description of
Doc's poker face: "He gambled with a moo-cow innocence
which led other players into believing he could be pushed
around...." Of course, nothing could have been further from
the truth. Holliday's killings totaled somewhere in the
vicinity of 18 to 35 men, depending on who did the counting,
a tally you might argue takes him a little beyond the bad boy
category.

No matter. The complexity of Holliday's personality still
makes for a great read. Kevin Jarre had to have included
Myers on his reading list as he researched his script for
Tombstone. Doc Holliday explores the strangely compelling
personality behind an enduring legend, leaving us with an
epitaph written by the man who knew Holliday best: "Doc
was," wrote Wyatt Earp, "a dentist whom necessity had made
a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a frontier
vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit;
a long, lean ash-blond fellow nearly dead with consumption,
and at the same time the most skilful gambler and the
nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever
knew." Yeah.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Into the West, May 2, 2006

By 

R. Howell "boriskhan" (Medford, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Doc Holliday (Bison Book) (Paperback)

I am not an Old West buff, more of an historian's interest in the subject but I don't seek out every possible book I can, I get ones that interest me. So I picked up John Myers Myers book on Doc Holliday. It's a small text, just over 220 pages, originally published in 1955, and is purportedly the first biography of Doc Holliday. However, the book isn't necessarily about John "Doc" Holliday; it's more about the era of Doc. There is lots of flavor text throughout the early part of the book that makes you almost forget this is about Doc Holliday. We follow Doc from Georgia and into Texas where begins his life of gambling and 'outlawry'. Doc meets Wyatt Earp and, of course, ends up in Tombstone. From here, the next section of the book is more about the history of Tombstone within we have the cowboys/outlaws vs Earps who happen to have Doc on their side. Don't get me wrong, it's really quite well done and interesting, but the focus is once again drifted away from Doc. Thereafter we travel to Colorado and the aftermath of Tombstone politics. This is where I learned the most about Doc, the dirty crud that continued to plague Doc and the Earps after they got away from events in Arizona.

Overall, very good book on the life cycle of a colorful character but not necessarily a biography so much as an observer-peeking-at-an interesting-fellow. Maybe that's what separates this biography from others, Myers sets it up so you can see the events through details rather than giving the outline of point by point presumed facts in a lifeless text. Good book, definitely belongs on any Old West bookshelf.