Return to American West

Return to Alphabetical Book Listing

---

Myths and Mysteries of the Old West
by Michael Rutter

Fact Versus Fiction in the Old West
In an age before twenty-four-hour news coverage, before law and order came into vogue, dime novels and causally written newspaper stories fueled the legends of the Old West. The real people who filled the vast Western landscape became the romantic folk heroes--or villains--of the era, among them Billy the Kid, George Armstrong Custer, and Sitting Bull. Myths and Mysteries of the Old West retells their tales with a witty brand of honest about "truths" as elusive as vapors.

Were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid truly shot down in South America, or did they live to a ripe old age, with or without wild woman Etta Place? Did the Gold Rush really start with a fortuitous accident? Did Calamity Jane in fact marry and have a baby with Will Bill Hickok, and did he really kill one hundred men? Did buffalo hunter Bill Dixon shoot a man dead from a mile away?

"We love a good story more than a slavish adherence to facts" writes author Michael Ritter. "The sin, apparently, isn't stretching the truth, but telling a bad story."

Paperback, c2005, xiv, 162 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-153) and index. 


$12.95