An absorbing, meticulous account of the famous O.K. Corral gunfight as it really happened.
In books, movies and TV series, Wyatt Earp has been portrayed as an American frontier hero who, along with his brothers and his friend Doc Holliday, faced down evil cowboys in the 1881 Tombstone, Ariz., gunfight immortalized in John Ford’s classic My Darling Clementine (1946), starring Henry Fonda. In fact, writes 2010 Edgar Award finalist Guinn (Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, 2009, etc.), the traditional rendering of the celebrated shootout has skewed our understanding of frontier history. The gunfight did not occur in the O.K. Corral, but rather in a nearby vacant lot. Nobody knows exactly what happened during the shootout—we can only piece together “most likely scenarios” writes the author—but it certainly was not a classic confrontation between good and evil, as described by many writers. Drawing on papers and interviews, Guinn places his complex and nuanced story firmly within the context of the evolving Western frontier, where gold and silver began attracting prospectors, miners, and con artists in the 1850s. When the Earp brothers arrived in 1879, the nascent mining town of Tombstone had about 900 residents. Virgil Earp became police chief. Wyatt, a sometime lawman, played card games in local bars. Their brawling dentist friend Doc Holliday also gambled. Describing the many social, political and other forces that set the stage for the gunfight (including new edicts regarding arrests and carrying guns), Guinn details the historic events of the cold afternoon of Oct. 26, 1881: drunken outlaw Ike Clanton’s wild threats against Wyatt Earp and Holliday; Virgil’s attempt (together with his brothers and Doc) to disarm Ike and his cowboy buddies; and the 30-second exchange of gunfire that left three cowboys dead. Just the facts—and still a great story.
Pub Date: May 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4391-5424-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
