The Authentic Wild West: The Outlaws by James D. Horan (1978, Hardcover)

The Authentic Wild West:  The Outlaws
Accounts by Eyewitnesses and the Outlaws Themselves
by James D. Horan
Publisher:  Crown Publishers, Inc.
Copyright 1978
Third Printing
With 250 authentic documents and illustrations

Whenever it touches paper, James D. Horan's pen makes the West live.  In The Authentic Wild West:  The Outlaws, he continues to tell the matchless stories of America's favorite folklore heroes.  But with a difference:  by stripping away the tarnished legendary and unearthing new documentation, firsthand and eyewitness accounts, he makes historical accuracy more exciting and romantic than the myths.  These gripping episodes, many of them freshly revealed, are among the hundreds detailed here:

* A backwoods physician's dramatic rescue of Jesse James from a suicide attempt.

* The arrogant life and terrifying death of the Renos, "inventors" of train robbery in America.

* What Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and the pretty and mysterious Etta Place really did in New York City; what eventually happened to Etta; and how Cassidy and the Kid died in a desolate Bolivian mountain village -- told by eyewitnesses who both hunted and befriended the outlaw trio.

* The increasingly bloody manhunt of the Texas rangers for the clever, elusive, and good-humored Sam Bass.

* An invasion by cattle barons' mercenaries, which resulted in a "tank" battle on the ranchlands of Wyoming.

* Eyewitness accounts of two of the bloodiest mornings in the history of Western banditry:  the James-Youngner gang's raid on Northfield, Minnesota; and the Dalton's attempt to rob two banks at the same time in Coffeyville, Kansas.

* A grotesquely humorous robbery by Tiburcio Vasquez, California's premier bandit leader, in which he allowed a rancher to prove by his accounts book that he was too poor to be a victim.

* The courtship of the star-crossed lovers of the Wild West, Jesse James and his sweetheart Zee, and Jesse's dictated account of their marriage -- "You can say we married for love."

* The outlaw who never was:  the fabulous story of Joaquin Murieta, California's legendary folklore hero, who was created by the son of a famous Cherokee chief to pay his room rent.

* How the violent history of the Wild Bunch, the largest, most colorful band of outlaws in the American West, ended on a quiet note when Elza Lay, the "educated rider," discovered a rich oil field, but never received a penny of its enormous wealth.

Among the 250 rare and unpublished photographs and documents in this volume are:

* The only known photograph of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in South America.

* Cole Younger's handwritten parole report.

* The coroner's inquest into the lynching of Jim Averill and Cattle Kate Watson.

* The unpublished signature of Jesse James, using the alias "Tom Howard," written shortly before he was assassinated by Bob Ford.

* A rare photograph of the Daltons as cowboys, before they turned to outlawry.

* A never-before-published photograph of Tiburcio Vasquez, California's renowned outlaw leader.

* The original photograph of Jesse James's redoubtable mother, whose arm was blown off by midnight raiders seeking her son.

* A series of rare photographs of Salt Lake City as Butch Cassidy knew it, taken by the famous frontier photographer C. Robert Savage.

* A unique photograph of Los Angeles at the time of Tiburcio Vasquez, when it was a village of windmills, dirt streets, and livery stables.

Condition:  Used.  Hardcover.  Dust cover.  Pages are tanned and darkening from age.  Previous owner's "Library Of" stamp is on the front endpaper.  Dust covers are tanned from age.  Dust covers show a bit of edge wear and tear and creasing.  Binding is beginning to split in places throughout the book, but pages are in tact.  THIS BOOK IS FOUR POUNDS.

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