Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Essentially an Autobiography, February 16, 2004
I just finished this most interesting biography of Wyatt Earp and I found myself both fascinated and a bit skeptical. I was fascinated by the life of Wyatt Earp as it was written by a man who interviewed him over a period of time. I was impressed with the research that the author, Stuart Lake, appeared to have put into his project. He had interviewed a number of surviving witnesses to the life of Earp. He also had a number of newspaper accounts and appears to have located a number of valuable documents in the course of his research. The book wasted little time in getting to Wyatt's career in law enforcement in the American West. The bulk, and I mean just about ALL, of the book is spent on his career in Wichta and Dodge City, Kansas as well as Tombstone, Arizona. The many famous (and not so famous) outlaws and lawmen of the Old West move in and out of the story on a regular basis. Stuart lists an almost endless number of feats of daring by Wyatt Earp in the process of making his case for Earp as the greatest of all men of the American West. Many of the events are depicted in great and compelling detail. Many of the parties are quoted, presumeably, from the memory of Earp himself. There is never a dull moment in the life of our hero, especially considering that all this action took place over a relatively short period of time. The book, at times, reads like a well-researched dime novel. For a chance to re-live the wild, wild West, it has little competition.As for my skepticism, I came away wondering first of all; did all this really happen? Perhaps it did but our hero (and I am not trying to be facetious, Wyatt Earp truly is a hero) does it all seemingly with one hand tied behind his back. My other reservation has to do with the politics of the times and places. There are only good guys and bad guys and no exploration as to the motivations of either side except for good and evil. I found myself wondering if I were the only source of information about the events of my time and I had to relate to the world in 50 years or so the events I had witnessed. Take the Invasion of Iraq, the presidential election of 2000, or the impeachment of President Clinton. I certainly could make a claim as to who was the "bad guy" and who was the "good guy" while somneone else of a different political persuasion could make the opposite claim. There is no one to speak for the opposing view in this book. The author quotes frequently from the Tombstone "Nugget" but always prefacing the unreliability of the source. I found myself wondering if there might not have been something of another side to the events in Tombstone. The labor strife in mining communities of those days was very significant; just study the history of Butte, MT. Is it possible that Earp supported the powers that be and the miners looked for support from wherever they could get it? Maybe not, but it would have been helpful if the author tried to give a bit of an impartial look at the motives of the opposing side in Tombstone. That said, and realizing that this is about Wyatt Earp, not the miners, this is a book well worth the time of any fan of the American West.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent summarization of the Wyatt Earp mythos, March 22, 1998
Given everything I've read about this book I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality and veracity of the narrative. I can understand how earlier reviewers taking Lake's claim to have received 100% of his facts from Earp, only from Earp, and entirely from Earp might have prejudiced people against Wyatt Earp, because there is a certain amount of "The tall lean figure of the fearless . . . " etc. The introduction puts this into context excellently well and I have no hesitation in recommending this book to people who are interested in the man and his era, with the proviso that they also read other texts (Sadie is referred two once or twice, never by name, during the portion of the narrative that covers Tombstone; Earp's marriage to and subsequent life with Josie (Sadie) Marcus Earp turns up only in the very last chapter -- on the next-to-last page, if I recall correctly). An excellent summarization of the Wyatt Earp mythos -- perhaps obviously so, since it is created with in large part creating that mythos (g). Still and all, not a book to be scorned, but to be read with a cross-reference or two at hand. The prose style holds up very well indeed.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book helped make Wyatt Earp a legend!, November 22, 1998
By A Customer
This is a good beginning book on the life of Wyatt Earp. The author later admitted that Wyatt Earp did not tell him all the stories in the book. In fact, Earp was pretty silent about his life story. The Monmouth portion of the book omitted these facts: Earp lived in Monmouth, his birthplace, three different times-- 1848-50, 1856-59, and 1868-1869-- until the age of twenty-one. His grandfather was a justice of the peace in Monmouth, and his father was a constable. His family lived in town, and bought properties during the first two time periods. Wyatt was not married in Illinois, but in Missouri, by his father, then a justice of the peace. This book rivets your attention and makes you proud of Wyatt Earp, an Old West lawman, born into a family preserving the peace.
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