Customer Reviews

John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book should have been called John Ringo: The Biography that Never Was.

Burrows spends most of time telling the reader why everybody else's biography of Ringo is wrong, and spends very little time telling us who John Ringo really was. In some ways I empathize with the author because there really is no substantial or reliable primary sources for a biography of Ringo. But frankly, having read a lot of history of the Old West, nothing in this book is new or revealing. While the exegesis and (extreme) criticism of Ringo's biographers was somewhat interesting -- it really becomes somewhat tedious.

Burrows could boiled this entire work down to a nice article in an academic historical journal -- and quite frankly probably should have.

I have the distinct feeling that John Ringo the Gunfighter Who Never Was is an old dissertation rendered into a book by a university press interested in promoting works of local history. It reminds me so much of my own history advisor, Tom B. Jones' words to me when picking a topic for my master's thesis, "keep it narrow, keep it simple, get it done!"

The subject is certainly a narrow one. John Ringo was one of the lessor gunfighters among a panoply of truly famous names: Wyatt Earp, John Westly Hardin, Doc Holliday, Jessie James, Wild Bill Hickock, Buffalo Bill, etc. While he may have been in the wings, he took noticeable part in almost none of the really graphic events of his time. The most noteworthy event of his life was his apparent decision to commit suicide.

The topic can hardly be but simple; the author himself admits that there is little concrete data available on Ringo, and he proceeds to demolish most of it in his critique of these sources, some of which are poorly written western adventure novels. To his credit Professor Burrows did manage to locate and critique several Ringo family resources that, for various reasons (for which check out the chapter notes) had not been used previously in an academic fashion.

The coverage of the project took a short 203 pages. It took that many mostly because the author repeats the same information in a variety of poses and with more adjectives than I've seen since attempting to wade through an old harlequin romance at the behest of a friend. Sometimes the sentences are so long one loses sight of where one was going by the end of them. And words? I read voraciously and have a substantial vocabulary-I was once hailed as a genius by a coworker for using "sanguine" correctly in a sentence!-but some of Dr. Burrows' choices suggested that a thesaurus was ever at hand least he be too repetitious.

I do think the book is an important one. It sets much of the mystery of the subject into perspective, which most of the written works heretofore have not. Certainly the on-going saga of the Ringo family's Victorian shame over the black sheep in its midst is certainly an interesting one. The difficult events of Ringo's early life, brings one to wonder how many of the misfits of the old west-or of our own time for that matter-grew out of stressful events suffered during early adolescence, events over which they had little or no control.

I think that what the book needed was a better and more critical editor than it got.

I reviewed this book for True West when it first came out as a long overdue book. I got my foot into it with the author whom I thought would appreciate my needling him a little over what I considered "professorial" writing. This in no way detracts from the long overdue aspect. Ringo was considerd a deadly gunfighter for years but really wasn't. Author Burrows made that point and did what author Eugene Cunningham suggested should be done for Wyatt Earp: to replace his halo with an unsanctified Stetson. This certainly was and is a valuable contribution to the literature on Tombstone and the famous Earp/Cow-boy politico-economic war that took place there, a war that has captivated Hollywood ever since they discovered it. I would like to see Burrows direct his considerable researching and writing talent to some other Western subject, or to amplifying our knowledge in this field. This is a must book for the library of Western Buffs and especially those interested in Tombstone and the Earps. Glenn G. Boyer

Jack Burrows' "John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was" is a well written book that focuses on what other writers have had to say about this legendary figure. Unfortunately, Burrows' concentration on the words written by others, overall detracts the book from telling readers about who John Ringo was or what he did during his life. The first impression one receives is that there is not much information about Ringo and that his reputation was largely achieved through the writings of latter day authors. Yet, Burrows' critic of other writers seems excessive at times. A reader who has little knowledge of Ringo other than his glorified reputation generally will like this book. But, there is far more information known about John Ringo's life than what is presented in Burrows' book. While I do recommend Jack Burrows' book, readers interested in an in-depth presentation of John Ringo's life must look elsewhere. Fortunately, biographies of John Ringo are not lacking. After reading Jack Burrows' book, readers should read Steve Gatto's recently released book "Johnny Ringo." When it comes to presenting information about John Ringo's activities throughout his life, Gatto's "Johnny Ringo" is vastly superior to Burrows' "John Ringo."

A well researched and (mostly) interesting book, although even an Englishman like myself had to have a dictionary to hand which made it hardgoing at times! (Where did he learn all those words?!!) Dr Burrows did tend to knock other authors of Western history, but I guess that is useful as we are at least able to take the mentioned books with a 'pinch of salt'.

Wow...The author spends most of his book bashing other authors and using a language I later found out was english! I spent 30% of my time looking up definitions. Thanks US public school system!
I would recommend this book to western history fiends or the like, but not to the reader actually seeking information (the very idea!) on the elusive John Ringo.

This book is really about two separate stories and should have been made in 2 parts: Part I: Facts about Ringo; and Part II: Every Other Ringo Author is a Liar. Burrows spends so much time rambling on vicious tirades towards other authors that it just saturates the pages. Like so many, I got this book out of curiosity about Ringo. What I can say is that this book gives you facts about him, but it will take you a long time to find them.

Between the facts, you will spend most of your reading on why other Ringo authors are liars, running for a dictionary, and asking yourself if you really want to finish the book. An editor really could have worked wonders for this book. A great editor could've narrowed this book down to about 50 pages.

Jack Burrows obviously did a good deal of research on this topic. Unfortunately, he spends too much time running down the authors of other works on this topic and not enough on the detail of what was yielded by his research. While his discussions and comparisons are at times interesting, some of his conclusions are a bit thinly supported by the facts he presents. I gained the impression that this was an academic work (thesis or dissertation) that was not sufficiently edited. His lengthy sentence structure coupled with his tendency to use inappropriate adjectives made this an uncomfortable read. This could have been boiled down to an excellent journal article.

I love history. I love learning about new people and places. I love discovering information I'd never known before. In this book, I learned a smattering about Johnny Ringo, but honestly, not that much. The fact is there just isn't that much to learn about him. If it wasn't for the company he kept, John Ringo would have likely faded into the obscurity he has enjoyed in his death.

This book was more an exercise in learning new vocabulary words (or words long forgotten perhaps) than it is about true exploration of a person from history.

I found this book to be very informative and I discovered many facets of information about this Old West character that have been scare to non-existent in other books about this portion of our history. As some other readers have commented, the only thing I can find distracting about the style of writing was that I was finding myself constantly having to re-read passages to get the point or look up a great many words the author used to find their meaning and I pride myself in having a good command of vocabulary. I don't believe this was necessary for this topic as plain language would have sufficed. Other than this observation, I believe the author was very thorough in his research and would highly recommend it to other readers.