A pleasure for thoughtful fans of Old West history, revisionist without being iconoclastic.
A ripsnortin’ ramble across the bloodstained Arizona desert with Wyatt Earp and company.
Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the like may be best known for the famous shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, but, as trial lawyer and popular historian Boessenecker ably shows, that was but one episode in a drama with many moving parts. Some of it traces back to points east, where ruffians known as “Cowboys”—not at all an admiring term in those days, “synonymous with desperado, bandit, and cutthroat”—robbed and murdered with abandon. The presiding genius of one band was an Irish New Englander who joined the Army and found frontier New Mexico a congenial place to conduct his nefarious business, including cattle rustling, horse thievery, and other affronts to public order. The story of Billy the Kid figures in this history, as does that of Earp paterfamilias Nicholas, hard-drinking, opinionated, and sometimes in trouble with the law. Indeed, at points in this narrative, readers may need a score card to keep track of which side of the law Wyatt and company were on at any given time. By the time they went to war with a Cowboy named Curly Bill Brocius, they were vigilantes who themselves would be in trouble with the authorities, Wyatt having gunned down a quarry on the streets of Tucson without much regard for the niceties of a fair warning. Throughout, Boessenecker displays a fine eye for period detail: He notes that much Old West violence had a political dimension that makes our time look tranquil by comparison. It was made all the nastier by the “entertainment vacuum” that existed on a frontier without much to do except drink and brawl. Charges that the Earps took part in dark-side activities such as gambling “were inflammatory but true,” writes the author, good reason to stay a step ahead of the law and get out of Tombstone after the shooting stopped.
A pleasure for thoughtful fans of Old West history, revisionist without being iconoclastic.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-335-01585-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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