Fiction requires a suspension of disbelief, and history buffs will have to do a lot of suspending with Mary Doria Russell’s Doc. What is this need...
Doc
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Western Books & Movies
Child of the Fighting Tenth
If one area of Western Americana comes up short, it is memoirs of “Army brats” in the Old West. Forrestine C. Hooker’s Child of the Fighting Tenth...
David Crockett: The Lion of the West
Davy Crockett became one of America’s first celebrities, as Michael Wallis impressively demonstrates in David Crockett: The Lion of the West. With a...
Bloody Bill Longley
Rick Miller’s Bloody Bill Longley peels away the folklore encasing a once-notorious Texas outlaw. More cowardly braggart than badman, Longley...
Captain John R. Hughes: Lone Star Ranger
The Texas Rangers have more to offer than just Jack Hays. A ranger who continued his tradition in the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries was John...
Kit Carson: The Life of an American Border Man
Two schools of thought exist on mountain man Kit Carson. He was either one of the great scout/explorers in American history, or he tried to wipe out...
The Last Gunfight
Fresh off his acclaimed bio of Bonnie and Clyde, Jeff Guinn turns his attention to the Old West. The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout...
1958’s Terror in a Texas Town
The year 1958 saw two Westerns with similar stories: William Wyler’s big-budget, color The Big Country and the low-budget, black-and-white Terror in...
Dinos in the West
If we can be expected to accept animated cowboy chameleons and marauding aliens in our newfangled Western movie world, we may as well toss in...
True Grit
The 2010 True Grit may not have grabbed any Oscars, but it did rake in more money than any Western since Dances With Wolves. The DVD and Blu-ray...
Stars in My Crown
The 1950 movie Stars in My Crown stars Joel McCrea as a Civil War vet, Josiah Gray, who arrives in a Tenneesee town as the new pastor. The story is...
Ambush
Robert Taylor’s second Western after Billy the Kid, 1950’s Ambush, is an underrated cavalry picture. Hard boiled characters were everywhere in that...