Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West by Tom Clavin is a fascinating account of how one of the wildest settlements in the expanding nation was tamed largely by two legendary figures what is known as the Wild West.
Clavin is a prolific historical writer who specializes one of the most fabled eras of American history. He presents the reader with an interesting problem at the beginning. He reports that there is almost too much material to sift through regarding Wyatt Earp, but there is relatively scant information about Bat Masterson. He still manages to present fascinating histories of both of these men we well as other familiar names such as Doc Holliday, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid.
Clavin’s prose is pretty straight-forward, but he does pepper the book with some sly humor. He does acknowledge that there is a lot of falsehoods to weed through in his research. He is pretty clear as to when he is speculating as to how certain events went down, which is appreciated.
He said that much of the exploits of Earp and Masterson have been embellished by other writers and the media over the decades, but it seems their actual lives were much more enthralling than many led regardless.
There isn’t much to really criticize about this book. Not everything was laid out linearly, but I suspect that many books of this sort are like that. There is a bit of jumping back and forth in the timeline as Clavin has to divide his attention between two main figures of 1870’s
Clavin is very thorough in his research and seems to be forthright about some of the ambiguity in the information he had gathered. As mentioned before, he does a great job of identifying moments of speculation and some guessing as to what motivated certain people in certain events.
This is a rare reading indulgence for me. I don’t read much non-fiction; however, I hope to improve on that this coming year. I will likely revisit the works of Tom Clavin before long.
Anyway, for those interested in a more reliable account of the Old West, Clavin seems to be an excellent place to start. Dodge City is a very enlightening and entertaining read and provides what seems a probable accurate take on what life was like in one of the most turbulent periods in American lore.
I will return to thriller genre with a writer I have noticed recently who seems to have quite a bibliography for someone who seems so new to the literary scene. I am about to be introduced by Freida McFadden to The Perfect Son.
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