The Myth of the Gunfighter

Remember when you sat in the movie theatre on a Saturday afternoon and watched two men walk slowly down the dusty street toward each other. Merchants shuttered doors. Women whisked children off the street. The bad guy was unshaven, snarling and he wore a black hat. The good guy was tall, handsome and looked magnificent in his white Stetson. The music came up in the background and you stopped putting popcorn in your mouth as the bad man's hand moved toward the pistol on his hip.

Great stuff from Hollywood (and pulp novels), but far from factual, Joseph G. Rosa tells us. Gunfighters of the old West were more imagination than fact. Of course, the code of the entertainment world is, "When the legend is greater than reality," print the legend.
  
Joseph G. Rosa is a historian of the Wild West, author, and the chief biographer of Wild Bill Hickok as well as several other figures of this period.

Mr. Rosa makes his case for setting the record straight in his new book:

Age of the Gunfighter: Men and Weapons on the Frontier, 1840-1900. by Joseph G. Rosa. University of Oklahoma Press. Paperback