Doc Holliday The Life and Legend
"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 on his enigmatic subject, Roberts
discovered numerous new primary sources in his quest to understand both what
John Henry Holliday did and didn’t do, and what these exploits meant to the
elusive man behind the now-legendary deeds.
Roberts explores Holliday’s idyllic, antebellum childhood in Georgia, where
he was schooled in the manly virtues of independence, loyalty, proficiency with
weapons of every kind, and above all, honor. He considers numerous explanations
behind John Henry’s sudden and drastic decision to abandon his large extended
family and a promising career to move to Texas, where, in the parlance of the
day, he "slipped from the path of rectitude" even as he clung to his
profession and the ideals he had learned as a child. Roberts tracks Holliday’s
western ramblings from Dallas to Denver to Cheyenne to Dodge City to Tombstone,
always in pursuit of the next game of chance and another shot of whiskey, his
health on a deep, downward spiral, his gunfighting skills on the rise. Along the
way he befriended (or made enemies of) such Western icons as Bat Masterson,
Kate Elder, Curly Bill Brocius, and Wyatt Earp.
As you’ll discover, there were as many conflicting opinions about Doc
Holliday as there were people who knew him, or knew of him: To Earp, he was a
"mad, merry scamp with a heart of gold and nerves of steel." According
to Masterson, he "had a mean disposition and an ungovernable temper, and
under the influence of liquor was a dangerous man." Newspapers called him
everything from "a very mild-mannered man . . . genial and
companionable" to a "shiftless bagged-legged character—a killer and
a professional cut-throat." In this fascinating probe into the real life of
a near-mythic figure, you’ll meet the man who lived up to every one of these
statements and more."
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