Pre-WWII Los Angeles is the stuff of legend. Yet, somehow, this fascinating story of gambling and corruption has not yet been told. Fortunately,...
The Gambler and the Bug boy
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Western Books & Movies
Frontier Justice in the Wild West
If you have a taste for the gruesome side of frontier life, then this is the book for you. From 1854 to 1910, more than 1,000 men and two women were...
Indian war veterans
As an ex-WWII private first class, I applaud Greene’s editing of these memoirs. Greene shoots down the commonly-held belief that Indian War soldiers...
True tales of the Prairies & Plains
David Dary has gathered an entertaining and disparate collection of stories under the geographical theme of the Plains. Divided into five thematic...
My Dear Tom Mix
It’s not surprising that this curious Mexican film draws inspiration and some guidance from Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who...
Gunsmoke: The First Season
Gunsmoke was the black-and-white version of a radio show that starred Bill Conrad as Dodge City Marshal Matt Dillon, circa 1873. Conrad was a fine...
Appa-palooza
Appaloosa wasn’t Robert B. Parker’s first Western; that honor goes to Gunman’s Rhapsody, his 2001 novel about Wyatt Earp and Tombstone. Yet Parker...
The Comic Named Man With No Name
Yes, the character Clint Eastwood played in the most famous and successful of all Spaghetti Westerns, Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars...
Married to the Camera
On an artist’s studio tour, a decade or two ago, an elderly woman, upon seeing a sketch with very straight pencil guidelines, asked the artist, Ed...
3:10 to Yuma, on Track?
Everybody wants to make a Western. It’s a fact. Few directors of note, if you were to ask them, would say, “I’m not interested in Westerns; I have...
For the Love of a Horse
These true tales begin with Evans’ first horse, Cricket, a $10 steel bay that accompanied Evans across the Texas plain in search of rabbits. Among...
Legacy of the Tetons: Homesteading in Jackson Hole
In the story of Mormon Row near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, all of the classic Western settlers’ tribulations played havoc on the May and Moulton...