My Washington Times Review of 'Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, And The Wickedest Town In The American West'

The Washington Times published my review of Tom Clavin's Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West.

For those of us who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, popular TV programs were our introduction to Dodge City and Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, two of the Wild West town’s legendary lawmen.

As a kid I was a huge fan of Hugh O’Brian’s portrayal of Wyatt Earp and Gene Barry’s portrayal of Bat Masterson. I was also a fan of the long-running TV series “Gunsmoke,” which featured Dodge City as the town where James Arness’ fictional U.S. Marshall Matt Dillon had his many adventures. A new generation of fans now watch and enjoy the old reruns of these shows on cable stations.

Although the TV shows were entertaining, as I grew older and read history I learned that the shows about Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson were historically inaccurate and they were based in large part on books that had exaggerated their life stories. Mr. Earp and Mr. Masterson in their golden years also told exaggerated tales about themselves and each other.

The odd thing is that no exaggeration was truly necessary, as the true exploits of Mr. Earp and Mr. Masterson are certainly dramatic and interesting enough, as we learn from Tom Clavin’s excellent book, “Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/19/book-review-dodge-city-wyatt-earp-bat-matterson-an/

How Two Badass Sheriffs Tamed The Most Dangerous Town In The West

Nick Poppy at the New York Post offers a piece on Tom Clavin’s book on Dodge City, Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson

Any man fool enough to look for trouble in 1870s Dodge City could count on two things: finding it, and finding himself knocked over the head by the butt of a gun. And if he was especially unlucky or stupid, he could find a third thing: himself full of lead.

The infamous Kansas cow town had bloody beginnings, and violence, or the threat of it, was rarely far from mind. It started with buffalo. The seemingly endless herds on the nearby plains, coupled with demand for skins and tongues (considered a delicacy back East), birthed a buffalo hunting industry. And that industry, in turn, created a leathery class of buffalo hunters — skilled marksmen who could shoot from the saddle, subsist in harsh conditions and not shy from the sight of blood.

Out of these hunters’ ranks came two of the most fabled lawmen of the American West: Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, whose fascinating careers are brought to life in Tom Clavin’s “Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://nypost.com/2017/02/26/how-two-badass-sheriffs-tamed-the-most-dangerous-town-in-the-wild-west/