Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends

The central event of the Earp story is the fabled gunfight near Tombstone's O.K. Corral, a violent eruption in a simmering feud between, believe it or not, frontier Democrats and Republicans. Barra delves deeply into the motivations of all the participants and those who would later tell their stories, and he deserves credit for conducting his prodigious research with skepticism. However, the thoroughness of Barra's approach is a double-edged sword: his relentless examination of Earp's life and the various accounts of it can at times lead the narrative into a blinding sandstorm of minor details. Nonetheless, for those with a strong interest in sorting out the truth about the legends of Tombstone, this book is a valuable source. --Robert McNamara

Product Description
The gunfight at the OK Corrall was merely on e incident in the life of the most remarkable figure of the American West. In his 82 years, Earp was a buffalo hunter, d etective, prospector, saloon keeper and finally an advisor o n Hollywood Westerns. '