Customer Reviews

John Ringo, King of the Cowboys: His Life and Times from the Hoo Doo War to Tombstone, Second Edition (A.C. Greene Series)

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

 

 

The title of this book is very misleading. The book has more than 270 pages of which probably 40 are about Johnny Ringo. It is filled with details of the Hoo Doo war and 1880's Tombstone. The author apparently used this book to deliver his views on these two subjects. The book bounces around chronologically to fit the authors desire to make a poorly documented point. It's odd that he goes into detail about Johnny Ringo's distant relatives, this diatribe goes no where but he fails to provide relevant opposing views and research on views of Hoo Doo and Tombstone, he chooses to omit it. Ridiculous statements come out of no where like "Ringo was feeling melancholy at this time", how he possibly could know this is not documented.
This book is a huge waste of money. The publisher should be ashamed to have their name on it.

I've tried three times to read this book, and failed. The author wastes page after page on the genealogy, census reports, and net worth on everybody the Ringo family ever had contact with, and bores you to tears in the process. I began to first skip sentences, then paragraphs, pages and even chapters trying to learn something about John Ringo, and finally gave up in disgust. Not being able to read the entire book without throwing it down in anger, I really can't be sure, but I believe that there is only enough pertinent information on Ringo to fill a twelve page pamphlet. AVOID THIS BOOK!

I have to agree with the first reviewer. If you were expecting this to be about John Ringo you will be disssapointed. THe author used Ringo as a focal point to explain about the wars in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Knowing that going into the book it has a lot of information about the cattle wars of that time. It was interesting but I really wanted more about John RIngo. The better book is "John Ringo The gunfighter that never was" by Jack Burrows

Now in an updated second edition, John Ringo King of the Cowboys: His Life and Times from the Hoo Doo War to Tombstone is a biography of one of the most well-known gunmen of the American West. Deprived of his father during a family overland trek to California, and enmeshed in a blood feud engulfing post-Reconstruction Texas, Ringo earned his reputation as one of the deadliest gunfighters alive. After being incarcerated for his role in the feud, Ringo was elected as a lawman in Mason County, where the feud had originated. Ringo remained firmly in the center of the region's partisan politics and outbursts of violence as a lethal enemy to raiders and a champion of the (mostly Democratic) ranchers. He was an antagonist of the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday, and was part of the posse that eventually routed them from Arizona. Ringo's death remains partly a mystery; he perished in the Arizona desert, his name revered by some and cursed by others. An absorbing, skillfully told narrative biography that effectively transports the reader to a rugged and lawless century past.

This is a great book, if you want to get a true sense of the real John Ringo. Hollywood has mucked up so many people's lives from the Old West, that it's a
breath of fresh air when you can read what the person was truly like from others that knew him. Excellent reading!

A great read for those truly interested in the subject matter. If research and Western history are your thing, then this is the book for you!