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Title details for 1876 by Steve Wiegand - Available

1876

Year of the Gun: The Year Bat, Wyatt, Custer, Jesse, and the Two Bills (Buffalo and Wild) Created the Wild West, and Why It's Still With Us

by Steve Wiegand
ebook
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2 of 2 copies available

Veteran journalist and historian Steve Wiegand takes readers across the post-Civil War Wild West. Wiegand introduces—or re-introduces—us to lawmen such as Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp and outlaws such as the Younger and James Brothers, as well as larger-than-life figures such as Buffalo Bill and George Custer. He details the stories of these real-life legends, the aftermath and legacies they left behind, and the innumerable myths frequently attributed to them. Juxtaposing their real lives with the often-outlandish accounts of their exploits, 1876 swings from lighthearted humor to cliff-hanger suspense. It also portrays how the Wild West's initial, tantalizing promise of fame and glamour often disintegrated.
But 1876 also offers readers a unique element noticeably absent from most Wild West books: historical context. Wiegand expands his contemporary spotlight on America's 100th birthday year to encompass what was going on in the rest of the country. On the very same day George Armstrong Custer was dying on a parched hill in southeastern Montana and immortalizing himself as both hero and villain, Alexander Graham Bell was at America's first World's Fair in Philadelphia, demonstrating his new invention—the telephone. At the same time Wyatt Earp was moseying into Dodge City to join the town's police force, Albert Goodwill Spalding was on a pitcher's mound in Chicago, establishing baseball as the national pastime and creating a sporting goods empire. And even as the James Boys and Younger Brothers were robbing banks, Democrats and Republicans were conspiring to steal the White House from the American voter. This book brings them all together in one place.
Fueled by the author's childhood interest in cowboys, train and bank robberies, and high noon shootouts, and their portrayal in iconic TV shows, 1876 is a delightful homage to famous Wild West figures who, with media help, helped shape the American character.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 4, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781610885829

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781610885829
      • File size: 12152 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      May 15, 2022
      The invention of the Wild West. Journalist and historian Wiegand grew up in the 1950s watching Westerns on TV and in the movies, enraptured by cowboys. Not surprisingly, he wanted to be one. That youthful enthusiasm infuses his project of separating fact from the rousing fictions that have been perpetrated about the West and about men such as dapper outlaw Bat Masterson; unlikely law enforcement agent Wyatt Earp; horse thief and actor-turned-Army scout Bill Cody; James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok; Army Col. George Armstrong Custer, brutally massacred; and bank and stagecoach robbers Frank and Jesse James. Focusing on events that occurred in 1876, America's centennial, Wiegand draws on contemporary newspapers and magazines to create a sense of immediacy and color for his portrayals of the ramshackle towns--Sweetwater, Texas; Dodge City, Kansas; Deadwood, South Dakota--where these men gambled and drank and where their conflicts sometimes erupted into infamous gunfights. But the Wild West, though contributing mightily to America's hunger for its own mythology, did not define the nation. Wiegand sets his protagonists' lives in the context of a country peopled by inventors, industrialists, writers, politicians, and entertainers, including Alexander Graham Bell, recent inventor of the telephone; pharmaceutical entrepreneur Eli Lilly; Henry Heinz, promoter of his new product, "catsup"; shameless showman P.T. Barnum; poet Walt Whitman, who eulogized Custer; and Mark Twain, whose Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published at the end of the year. A centennial exhibition in Philadelphia highlighted achievements of the striving nation, but the extravaganza could not hide festering problems, including a protracted economic recession, labor unrest, political corruption, violence against Blacks, and an increasingly strident women's suffrage movement. Besides offering a historical overview, Wiegand examines the books, movies, and TV shows that turned cowboys and outlaws into legends and the Wild West into "a 'reality' that persists, no matter how far removed it is from the facts." Lively, entertaining U.S. history.

      COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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