A refreshing blend of fact and legend—essential for collectors of Kid stuff.
A comprehensive consideration of the life and post-mortem career of perhaps the most legendary outlaw in American frontier history.
No one is more prepared to write about Billy the Kid—born Henry McCarty (1859-1881)—than University of New Mexico emeritus history professor Etulain, who has spent many years researching and studying his subject, visiting historic sites and archives. Whereas many books trace Billy’s trajectory from New York hooligan to New Mexico outlaw, Etulain painstakingly charts his path across the plains, with a sojourn in Wichita, where many locals, a contemporary recounted, “remember him as a street gamin in the days of the longhorns.” Out west, the young man took up a life of small crime before becoming embroiled in a big-picture war between competing business factions in a New Mexico that was ruled by “power-hungry newcomers.” Billy’s subsequent career involved cattle rustling, killing, and his eventual execution. Etulain strikes a careful balance between the two main strands of literature and history surrounding his subject, one portraying him as a murderous psychopath and the other as a folk hero. The author sees reason to consider him a complex figure who was capable of great evil but also generosity. Valuably, Etulain weaves the story of the young outlaw into the larger development of the Southwest, including the rancorous years of the Civil War and early cattle-raising era. The second part of the book is for perhaps a more specialist audience, though readers with an interest in Wild West mythography, literature, and film will enjoy the author’s overview of the vast branch of pop culture that surrounds Billy. “In the years from the mid-1880s to the early 1920s two writers provided nearly half the books and essays about Billy the Kid that gained notoriety among American readers,” writes Etulain, presaging a flood of works that has barely slowed ever since.
A refreshing blend of fact and legend—essential for collectors of Kid stuff.Pub Date: July 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8061-6625-4
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Univ. of Oklahoma
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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