Customer Reviews

Doc Holliday (Bison Book)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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!

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.

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.

When John Myers Myers wrote this book not much was publicly available and/or known about Doc. Hence, his book, like Pat Jahns, was more about the place and time than the man. Jahns at least admitted it in her title with (FRONTIER WORLD OF ETC.). Both wrote 98% about the World of Doc and 2% about Doc from necessity. Myers is better in his Tombstone Last Chance book and did some creditable research. Jahns was the first to find Doc's family and interview members and also find Frank Waters Unpublished Ms. on Aunt Allie Earp in the Arizona Historical Society. (Of course she had no way of knowing that was half spurious.) John Myers Myers, however, had a great feel for the time and place and understood "Gunfigher Psychology."

Good read in any case. It should be in the "Compleat Western Buff's Bookshelf." Product of its times.

Doc Holliday is one of those characters seen out of the corner of history's eye, about whom all manner of nonsense has been written. This is a lovely little book of engaging discourse by an author whose conversational style is an absolute delight to read. I expect to be sub-specializing in this author just for the pleasure of listening to him write.

I enjoyed reading this book, but I guess I have seen too many movies about Doc Holliday and expected great excitement. The book is very detailed and details are important for the historian's point of view. On the other hand, sometimes too many details can be boring. Please do not pick up the book expecting great thrills and excitement, or you will be disappointed. Still, reading details about the life of this outlaw and gambler, which turned good guy and loyal friend to the Earp clan, certainly has interesting moments. If you are into the wild west, it is worth your time.

Doc Holliday is my favorite of all the colorful characters who became legends of the old West, and John Myers Myers is my favorite historian of that great epic of American history. I believe that this book is the best of the many volumes that Myers wrote on the history of the West. Myers brings just the right voice to the story - an idiosyncratic style of telling a tale full of colorful idioms and turns of phrase that perfectly match a history full of people with monikers like Doc, Big Nose Kate, and Curly Bill.
Myers was a great folk historian. While he did solid research on his subjects, he realized that the legends that grew up around certain characters had as much historical importance as the facts of their life. Often when writing histories of the West, verifiable facts are few, and legends are plentiful. This was certainly the case when Myers wrote `Doc Holiday'. Yet he was able to use what was known to weave a fascinating tale that rings true. History, after all, is more art form than science, and Myer's "Doc Holiday' should survive more academic efforts that have missed this point in a quixotic quest for "just the facts, ma'am".
Doc Holliday, both by the circumstances of his time and place, and apparently by his own design, left a scant official record of his passing among us, but he blazed a wide trail in the legend that he left behind. Myers did a fine job of ferreting out the former, and a masterful job of portraying the later. He captured the spirit of the man and the times and wild place in which he lived and moved. This is a book worthy of the legend, and I recommend it highly.

Theo Logos

The book will probabably be not 100% accurate at all, but it is still a nice try. A pitty Holliday didn't write something himself. A very good book anyhow, a must read for Tombstone-Earp-Holliday-fans !!!

I checked this book out of my library, and found it to be informative, if not a little dry. It's a good book for people who are just discovering Holliday. Basic and a surprisingly quick read. Give it a try!

This book is a good read if you can sit down and keep your mind on it. The author uses in my opinion too many words to get the point across and loses you. This book is not easy to read. If you are a hardcore Doc fan this is the one for you. Not personal just the facts.