Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend
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Who was Doc Holliday, the famed participant in the 1881 gunfight at OK Corral? Was he a killer and professional cutthroat, a reckless murderer, or a mild-mannered young man who would give aid to his friends, whatever the fight? Roberts (history, emeritus, Abraham Baldwin Coll.) considers these contrasting opinions as he relates John Henry "Doc" Holliday's life, a difficult task because Doc left no reminiscences, and the letters he wrote to family members were destroyed. The portrait that emerges is based on available newspaper stories and public records, which allow Roberts to show how Doc, who grew up in Georgia during the Civil War and received a DDS degree from the College of dental Surgery in Philadelphia, was a product of his circumstances. For example, he had tuberculosis and headed west in an effort to extend his life in the drier climate. Where the facts and reasons are not known, Roberts carefully considers the alternatives based upon the evidence. As he carefully points out, his work cannot be definitive but is an attempt-and a very sound one-to understand a man whose biography and legend will be forever entwined. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.
-- Stephen H. Peters, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette. ("Library Journal," March 15, 2006)
-- Stephen H. Peters, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette. ("Library Journal," March 15, 2006)
Roberts, an authority on western history, takes on John Henry Holliday, legendary gunman, drinker, gambler and dentist (hence "Doc"), best known for some adroit shooting at the OK Corral on October 26, 1881. This is part biography, part debunking of myths and part archive of accounts of the lives of Holliday and the Earp Brothers written from the time they were alive up to the present. Roberts iseffective in evoking the influences that formed his subject's character. Born in Georgia in 1851, Holliday absorbed the manliness and rebelliousness instilled in young men of his prosperous class in antebellum Southern culture. Holliday also acquired expertise in drinking, whoring and gambling, as well as a taste for violence. Roberts is measured in evaluating the myths associated with Holliday's exit from Georgia and his nomadic life in Texas, Colorado and Arizona. This brings the author to Tombstone, and the fray featuring Holliday and the Earps against the Clantons and McLaurys. You can't beat this story for drama, and Roberts provides a step-by-step account of the gunfight. Some chapters are unduly packed with Roberts's massive research. But without it, the book would not have been what the author plainly intends-- an omnibus of everything ever known, spoken or written about Doc Holliday. Photos not seen by "PW." "(Apr.)" ("Publishers Weekly," February 27, 2006)
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"You can′t beat this story for drama. . . . An omnibus of everything ever known, spoken, or written about Doc Holliday."
–Publishers Weekly
"An engagingly written, persuasively argued, solidly documented work of scholarship that will surely take its place in the literature of the Old West."
–Booklist
In Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, the historian Gary Roberts takes aim at the most complex, perplexing, and paradoxical gunfighter of the Old West, drawing on more than twenty years of research–including new primary sources–in his quest to separate the life from the legend. Doc Holliday was a study in contrasts: the legendary gunslinger who made his living as a dentist; the emaciated consumptive whose very name struck fear in the hearts of his enemies; the degenerate gambler and alcoholic whose fierce loyalty to his friends compelled him, more than once, to risk his own life; and the sidekick whose near–mythic status rivals that of the West′s greatest heroes. With lively details of Holliday′s spirited exploits, his relationships with such Western icons as Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, this book sheds new light on one of the most mysterious figures of frontier history.
–Publishers Weekly
"An engagingly written, persuasively argued, solidly documented work of scholarship that will surely take its place in the literature of the Old West."
–Booklist
In Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, the historian Gary Roberts takes aim at the most complex, perplexing, and paradoxical gunfighter of the Old West, drawing on more than twenty years of research–including new primary sources–in his quest to separate the life from the legend. Doc Holliday was a study in contrasts: the legendary gunslinger who made his living as a dentist; the emaciated consumptive whose very name struck fear in the hearts of his enemies; the degenerate gambler and alcoholic whose fierce loyalty to his friends compelled him, more than once, to risk his own life; and the sidekick whose near–mythic status rivals that of the West′s greatest heroes. With lively details of Holliday′s spirited exploits, his relationships with such Western icons as Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, this book sheds new light on one of the most mysterious figures of frontier history.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is by far the best Wild West book I have ever come across. As with Tefertiller's 'Wyatt Earp' (1997), at last we have some serious, credible academic research on a subject woefully handled by amateurs for far too long (actually, since the 1880s...). Robets not only outlines the 'truth' of Holliday's life from the historical evidence available - especially regarding his upbringing and his involvement with Wyatt Earp at the 'OK corral' - but also analyses the vast aray of myths and tall-tales that emerged from these incidents, exploring their significance to America's frontier mythology and identity - the 'good bad man', the heroic sherrif, the birth of law and order in the wilderness etc.
The reviewer complaining about length and detail perhaps did not appreciate that this is the nature of history publications at this very high level - meticulous referencing and notes, credible theories and evidence analysed in depth. However, as well as being satisfying from a historical perspective, this book was so well written and entertaining that I couldn't bear to put it down and wished it had been 200 pages longer! My favourite book this year - far more amusing than 'Wyatt Earp' - although, to be fair, Holliday is a far more amusing person in his own right!
If, like me, you are pining after the cancellation of TV show 'Deadwood', this book should ease you through the withdrawal, as Holliday's life has all the violence, brutality, political corruption, mind-bendingly elaborate plots and conspiracies, and intense (slightly peculiar) loyalties. Alas, the language is less colourful, but you can't have everything. In Roberts' analysis of newspaper interviews, Holliday comes across as a very entertaining, funny, appaling, disastrous, well-dressed specimen of humanity - with the scariest baby photo I have ever seen. Worth buying the book just to see that picture alone...
The reviewer complaining about length and detail perhaps did not appreciate that this is the nature of history publications at this very high level - meticulous referencing and notes, credible theories and evidence analysed in depth. However, as well as being satisfying from a historical perspective, this book was so well written and entertaining that I couldn't bear to put it down and wished it had been 200 pages longer! My favourite book this year - far more amusing than 'Wyatt Earp' - although, to be fair, Holliday is a far more amusing person in his own right!
If, like me, you are pining after the cancellation of TV show 'Deadwood', this book should ease you through the withdrawal, as Holliday's life has all the violence, brutality, political corruption, mind-bendingly elaborate plots and conspiracies, and intense (slightly peculiar) loyalties. Alas, the language is less colourful, but you can't have everything. In Roberts' analysis of newspaper interviews, Holliday comes across as a very entertaining, funny, appaling, disastrous, well-dressed specimen of humanity - with the scariest baby photo I have ever seen. Worth buying the book just to see that picture alone...
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'd like to agree with the other five star reviewer. This book is a serious, well-researched, cross-referenced history book focussing on the actual life of a character who has been so mythologised that the reality is obscure.
One of the reviews on the back states that everything that is known or recorded about Doc Holliday is in this book, which is pretty much accurate as I far as I can tell.
Sometimes this means going over scraps of information and postulating theories - this is not repetition; merely testing the facts.
Holliday comes across as a funny, drunk and mostly tragic man of his times. The machinations of 1880s Tombstone are detailed effectively and the real reasons for the Gunfight at the OK Corral teased out. It is a long way from the Hollywood nonsense and, actually, rather more interesting.
If you want a real book about the Old West and gunfighters, then this is the work for you.
One of the reviews on the back states that everything that is known or recorded about Doc Holliday is in this book, which is pretty much accurate as I far as I can tell.
Sometimes this means going over scraps of information and postulating theories - this is not repetition; merely testing the facts.
Holliday comes across as a funny, drunk and mostly tragic man of his times. The machinations of 1880s Tombstone are detailed effectively and the real reasons for the Gunfight at the OK Corral teased out. It is a long way from the Hollywood nonsense and, actually, rather more interesting.
If you want a real book about the Old West and gunfighters, then this is the work for you.
Format:Paperback
At 500 pages, including 100 pages of notes and sources, "DOC HOLLIDAY", by Gary Roberts, is a substantial and serious study of one of the most famous, complex and controversial figures in the history of the Old West. With well printed text and a scattering of interesting, contemporary photographs it is similar in size and scope to the equally fine account of "Wyatt Earp", by Casey Tefertiller, with which it has many points in common.Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend
The book is the result of wide ranging, scholarly research but it reads very well. The narrative covers John Henry Holliday's life from his pre-Civil War origins in a respectable, well-connected Southern family, via his years on the Western Frontier as a prominent gambler and feared gunfighter, to his premature, solitary death of consumption in a Colorado clinic in November 1887.
Along the way, we follow Doc's progress from one short-lived boom camp to another fuelled by the inexorable westward spread of the railroads and sporadic silver strikes. Despite the inevitable lawlessness, it may surprise readers to find that legal 'due process' looms large in even the smallest frontier communities, where lawyers, judges and politicians share the scene equally with gamblers, gunmen and prostitutes.
There is also the predominant influence of Frontier daily papers, and the ever-present struggle between Republican and Democratic politics. Gunplay erupts but not as frequently as one might expect, and is seldom of the one-to-one, quick draw type so beloved of films and TV series.
The great exception, of course, is the now world-famous "Gunfight at the OK Corral." But even this was almost accidental in origin and certainly had potentially catastrophic consequences for both Doc Holliday and the Earps. Inevitably, this seminal street fight, and its tragic, dramatic aftermath, forms the central climax to the book. The author gives the most clear and compelling account of these events and the complex web of circumstances leading up to them.
Throughout, the author draws exhaustively on contemporaneous newspaper reports, diary accounts, and court records. The whole Tombstone interlude is fascinatingly covered. Readers will note how much the conception of the Arizona "Cow-Boy" has changed over the years. Considered thieves and desperados - a menace and a threat to civilized society in the 1880s - strangely, they have turned into heroes and role models.
Doc Holliday emerges in all his complexity, a character shaped by terminal illness, circumstance and environment into an iconic figure. Simultaneously venal and heroic, he was a killer, but largely in defense of his own and his friends' lives: deadly with a knife or pistol, he was also a good dentist - professional and well educated. In sordid and violent company he could still display the qualities of a Southern gentleman and, above all, wins our respect for his unfailing bravery and loyalty.
Altogether, an excellent volume which could have been made even better by the addition of relevant maps and town plans of the areas described.
ANTHONY O'NEIL
Hale, Cheshire, UK
The book is the result of wide ranging, scholarly research but it reads very well. The narrative covers John Henry Holliday's life from his pre-Civil War origins in a respectable, well-connected Southern family, via his years on the Western Frontier as a prominent gambler and feared gunfighter, to his premature, solitary death of consumption in a Colorado clinic in November 1887.
Along the way, we follow Doc's progress from one short-lived boom camp to another fuelled by the inexorable westward spread of the railroads and sporadic silver strikes. Despite the inevitable lawlessness, it may surprise readers to find that legal 'due process' looms large in even the smallest frontier communities, where lawyers, judges and politicians share the scene equally with gamblers, gunmen and prostitutes.
There is also the predominant influence of Frontier daily papers, and the ever-present struggle between Republican and Democratic politics. Gunplay erupts but not as frequently as one might expect, and is seldom of the one-to-one, quick draw type so beloved of films and TV series.
The great exception, of course, is the now world-famous "Gunfight at the OK Corral." But even this was almost accidental in origin and certainly had potentially catastrophic consequences for both Doc Holliday and the Earps. Inevitably, this seminal street fight, and its tragic, dramatic aftermath, forms the central climax to the book. The author gives the most clear and compelling account of these events and the complex web of circumstances leading up to them.
Throughout, the author draws exhaustively on contemporaneous newspaper reports, diary accounts, and court records. The whole Tombstone interlude is fascinatingly covered. Readers will note how much the conception of the Arizona "Cow-Boy" has changed over the years. Considered thieves and desperados - a menace and a threat to civilized society in the 1880s - strangely, they have turned into heroes and role models.
Doc Holliday emerges in all his complexity, a character shaped by terminal illness, circumstance and environment into an iconic figure. Simultaneously venal and heroic, he was a killer, but largely in defense of his own and his friends' lives: deadly with a knife or pistol, he was also a good dentist - professional and well educated. In sordid and violent company he could still display the qualities of a Southern gentleman and, above all, wins our respect for his unfailing bravery and loyalty.
Altogether, an excellent volume which could have been made even better by the addition of relevant maps and town plans of the areas described.
ANTHONY O'NEIL
Hale, Cheshire, UK
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Better late than never!
Book arrived rather late, ordered it for my partner's birthday but it did not arrive until a week after.
In excellent condition though.
In excellent condition though.
Published on 3 Feb 2010 by Bethan Gambold
Brilliantly written account of a Legend!
Fantastic account of a Western legend. If you like the Wild West, you will love this.
Published on 31 Oct 2009 by Mr. D. J. Dorward
Too long!
Another vote for 'far too long'. This book would benefit from some serious editing.
The simple fact about Doc Holliday is that very little is known about him and his life. Read more
The simple fact about Doc Holliday is that very little is known about him and his life. Read more
Published on 8 Jan 2009 by Bookworm
Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend
A very interesting and informative book, however i do believe it was about 200 pages to long.
I did not enjoy reading every single senario that could have been at every event,... Read more
I did not enjoy reading every single senario that could have been at every event,... Read more
Published on 24 Aug 2007 by Mr. L. Sturgess
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