His contemporaries called him Wild Bill, and newspapermen and others made him a legend in his own time. Among western characters only General George Armstrong Custer and Buffalo Bill Cody are as readily recognized by the general public. In writing this biography, Joseph G. Rosa has expressed the hope that "Hickok emerges as a man and not a legend." For this comprehensive revision of his earlier biography of Wild Bill the author was allowed to work from newly available materials in the possession of the Hickok family. He also discovered new material pertaining to Wild Bill’s Civil War exploits and his service as a marshal and found the pardon file of his murderer, John McCall. Additional, rare photographs of Wild Bill are published here for the first time. The results of Rosa’s additional research make this second edition the best biography of Wild Bill likely to be written for years to come.

“James Butler Hickok, generally called ‘Wild Bill,’ epitomized the archetypal gunfighter, that half-man, half-myth that became the heir to the mystique of the duelist when that method of resolving differences waned. . . . Easy access to a gun and whiskey coupled with gambling was the cause of most gunfights--few of which bore any resemblance to the gentlemanly duel of earlier times. . . . Hickok’s gunfights were unusual in that most of them were ‘fair’ fights, not just killings resulting from rage, jealousy over a woman, or drunkenness. And, the majority of his encounters were in his role as lawman or as an individual upholding the law.”--from Wild Bill Hickok, Gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok (1837–1876) was a Civil War spy and scout, Indian fighter, gambler, and peace officer. He was also one of the greatest gunfighters in the West. His peers referred to his reflexes as “phenomenal” and to his skill with a pistol as “miraculous.” In Wild Bill Hickok, Gunfighter, Joseph G. Rosa, the world’s foremost authority on Hickok, provides an informative examination of Hickok’s many gunfights. Rosa describes the types of guns used by Hickok and illustrates his use of the plains’ style of “quick draw,” as well as examining other elements of the Hickok legend. He even reconsiders the infamous “dead man’s hand” allegedly held by Hickok when he was shot to death at age thirty-nine while playing poker. Numerous photographs and drawings accompany Rosa’s down-to-earth text.

Wild Bill Hickok, the man who became known as the first gunfighter of the Old West.was more than the legend dictates. The man of legend is a gunslinger, a man-killer, who was as ruthless and dangerous as any outlaw of the time. But the real man was known by his friends as a gentleman of refined bearing and excellent character, who suffered a deep wariness and paranoia, searching the faces of strangers and being ever vigilant against the attack by an ambitious young gunslinger or any of his enemies, that was sure to come when he least expected it. When crossed or threatened in any way, the darker side of Hickok emerged in an instant to face and eliminate any foe. He was, by his nature and his many daring adventures, a man of his time, who met a tragic and violent end.Wild Bill - The Story of James Butler Hickok is a true story of the man, the lawman and the fearless gunfighter who made his inevitable and famous mark in the Old West, and passed into legend.

Of all the Old West figures whose images eventually found their way into our popular culture, none was better known than Wild Bill Hickok. This book, a companion volume to Joseph Rosa’s exhaustive biography, They Called Him Wild Bill, reproduces in one volume nearly all the known portraits of Wild Bill, together with photographs of his family, his friends, his foes, and the places that knew him.

Wild Bill’s ever-evolving legend When it came to the Wild West, the nineteenth-century press rarely let truth get in the way of a good story. James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok’s story was no exception. Mythologized and sensationalized, Hickok was turned into the deadliest gunfighter of all, a so-called moral killer, a national phenomenon even while he was alive. Rather than attempt to tease truth from fiction, coauthors Paul Ashdown and Edward Caudill investigate the ways in which Hickok embodied the culture of glamorized violence Americans embraced after the Civil War and examine the process of how his story emerged, evolved, and turned into a viral multimedia sensation full of the excitement, danger, and romance of the West. Journalists, the coauthors demonstrate, invented “Wild Bill” Hickok, glorifying him as a civilizer. They inflated his body count and constructed his legend in the midst of an emerging celebrity culture that grew up around penny newspapers. His death by treachery, at a relatively young age, made the story tragic, and dime-store novelists took over where the press left off. Reimagined as entertainment, Hickok’s legend continued to enthrall Americans in literature, on radio, on television, and in the movies, and it still draws tourists to notorious Deadwood, South Dakota. American culture often embraces myths that later become accepted as popular history. By investigating the allure and power of Hickok’s myth, Ashdown and Caudill explain how American journalism and popular culture have shaped the way Civil War–era figures are remembered and reveal how Americans have embraced violence as entertainment.

Wild Bill Hickok was a celebrity before there ever was a Hollywood. And he was dead before he was forty. Now Richard Matheson, Spur Award-winning author of Journal of the Gun Years, delves into the life and times of James Butler Hickok . . . gunfighter, U.S. marshal, legend. The cruelty that turned him violent. The fears that drove him. And the historic events that cause his name to live on more than century later. A compelling vision of the man behind the myth--and an unforgettable journey into the American frontier. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

DEADWOOD, DAKOTA TERRITORIES, 1876: Legendary gunman Wild Bill Hickcock and his friend Charlie Utter have come to the Black Hills town of Deadwood fresh from Cheyenne, fleeing an ungrateful populace. Bill, aging and sick but still able to best any man in a fair gunfight, just wants to be left alone to drink and play cards. But in this town of played-out miners, bounty hunters, upstairs girls, Chinese immigrants, and various other entrepeneurs and miscreants, he finds himself pursued by a vicious sheriff, a perverse whore man bent on revenge, and a besotted Calamity Jane. Fueled by liquor, sex, and violence, this is the real wild west, unlike anything portrayed in the dime novels that first told its story.

bibliography, index, eight-page photo essay