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46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book is a treasure, October 22, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: They Called Him Wild Bill: The Life and Adventures of James Butler Hickok (Paperback)
The first edition of this book changed my life. Back in the sixties I was a teenage Wild West nerd, reading all I could about Western gunfighters. But I was frutstrated. No serious historian was writing about them so I had to settle for highly fictionalized versions. Then Joseph Rosa came along with this wonderful book and established the standard for what a well researched bio of a western gunfighter should be. It taught me the value of looking for the truth even if it's not as pleasent as I would like it to be. There's been few gunfighter bios since that can come close to this one for quaility characterization. The Hickock he creates is flesh and blood and very sympathetic as well as truly flawed. The second edition is even better. This book is a treasure. Thank you, Mr. Rosa.
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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Introduction to a Legend, November 13, 2003
This review is from: They Called Him Wild Bill: The Life and Adventures of James Butler Hickok (Paperback)
There are many figures from the American West whose lives are encrusted with legend and myth, but, with Wild Bill Hickok, the process started even before he was dead.
It was a short life, done at 39 when he was shot in the back by one Jack McCall in Deadwood, South Dakota.
In those 39 years, Hickok helped his father run a station in the Underground Railway, fought as a guerilla in Missouri, went behind enemy lines as a scout and spy in the Civil War, drove coaches and wagons, guided hunting parties, served as a detective for the U. S. government, prospected for gold, acted in a traveling stage show with Buffalo Bill Cody, gambled, and, most famously, served as a lawman in Hays and Abilene, Kansas. During that time, he killed men and exhibited a shooting skill with revolvers unmatched at the time.
I grew up not far from Deadwood, a town that has enshrined Hickok's grave and memory, but this is the first full-length, adult biography of him I've read, and I found it a good, credible introduction to his life.
Rosa, the world's leading authority on Hickok, clearly admires Hickok, but, if he refutes the debunkers of Hickok's life, he's also generally skeptical of all the legends around Hickok. He looks at official records, newspaper articles, memoirs, and even, when Hickok's shooting abilities are discussed, modern attempts to recreate them, to get to the truth of Wild Bill. Rosa covers the questions of how many people Hickok killed, his weapons, his (lack of) relationship with Calamity Jane, his odd marriage to the remarkable Agnes Lake who was eleven years his senior, the extent and origin of his failing eyesight, and devotes a whole chapter to the unexplained motives of Wild Bill's murderer. He even discusses the stories of Wild Bill's famous horse, Black Nell. And, of course, Rosa discusses the famous gunfights in Hickok's life including the one that started the Western legend of the showdown in the middle of the street: the killing of Dave Tutt.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb biography of Hickok, December 22, 2005
This review is from: They Called Him Wild Bill: The Life and Adventures of James Butler Hickok (Paperback)
Joseph Rosa is THE authority on James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok. The first edition of this biography appeared in 1964, and here it's been updated with much new material, including never-before-published photographs. Rosa, an Englishman, published a new biography of Hickok in 1996, which I haven't seen, but THEY CALLED HIM WILD BILL is certainly a thorough, and perhaps definitive, biography of this larger-than-life gunfighter.
Hickok came to Kansas from Illinois as an 18 year old and got a job driving wagons on the Santa Fe Trail. Mauled by a bear, he was assigned to the Rock Creek Stage Station where the Hickok legend began: he got into a fight with David McCanles (possibly over a woman), shooting him and two other men. When the Ned Buntlines began writing about him, this incident took on legendary proportions, with Hickok shooting dozens of men in some cases.
His prowess with a gun was excellent (he was ambidextrous and could shoot a pistol accurately with both hands, though he was dead-on precise with his right hand), and certainly better than his card playing. He fought in the Civil War in Missouri as a scout and had a showdown on a street in Springfield that added to his gunslinger reputation. His fame spreading, he joined a circus for awhile in Texas in which he showed off his marksmanship.
In 1871 he became marshal at Abilene, and although he was there for less than a year, he received widespread praise in the newspapers for the way he performed his duties. Always the rover, he spent the next few years in Colorado, Kansas City, and New York, the last as a member of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, which he didn't care for. Back west again, he visited Cheyenne and Denver, and then went to Deadwood in the Black Hills, where he was shot to death in a saloon, August 2, 1876. Although Calamity Jane figures largely in the Hickok legend, despite her own claims, it is doubtful the two were ever married.
Rosa's book is especially important because of the inclusion of lengthy accounts about Hickcok that appeared in newspapers of the day and early sensationalized biographies. Almost 100 different newspapers are cited by Rosa and virtually every page in the book contains long passages from one or another of them as he reconstructs Hickok's life. Separating fact from legend is Rosa's primary concern, and this he does well. Where doubt remains, he says so. And Rosa writes with style and authority. This is an excellent biography of Wild Bill, and one of the best biographies of any Western legend in the literature.
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