DODGE CITY: WYATT EARP, BAT MASTERSON AND THE WICKEDEST TOWN IN THE AMERICAN WEST

DODGE CITY                                                   TOM CALVIN

Dodge City, Kansas, is a place of legend. The town that started as a small military site exploded with the coming of the railroad, cattle drives, eager miners, settlers, and various entrepreneurs passing through to populate the expanding West. Before long, Dodge City’s streets were lined with saloons and brothels and its populace was thick with gunmen, horse thieves, and desperadoes of every sort. By the 1870s, Dodge City was known as the most violent and turbulent town in the West.

Enter Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. Young and largely self-trained men, the lawmen led the effort that established frontier justice and the rule of law in the American West, and did it in the wickedest place in the United States. When they moved on, Wyatt to Tombstone and Bat to Colorado, a tamed Dodge was left in the hands of Jim Masterson. But before long Wyatt and Bat, each having had a lawman brother killed, returned to that threatened western Kansas town to team up to restore order again in what became known as the Dodge City War before riding off into the sunset.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin's Dodge City tells the true story of their friendship, romances, gunfights, and adventures, along with the remarkable cast of characters they encountered along the way (including Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James, Doc Holliday, Buffalo Bill Cody, John Wesley Hardin, Billy the Kid, and Theodore Roosevelt) that has gone largely untold—lost in the haze of Hollywood films and western fiction, until now. 

PAT'S REVIEW;

This is a book about the old west and how Dodge City become not only a cow town, but also into a city. The people are just part of the story. Yes Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and many other famous cowboys and non-cowboys either’d lived or passed through the town. The actors and other odd characters are what add to this western tail. The stories of Wyatt, and his brothers really give a different look to his life and that of his brothers. From operating a freight out of San Bernardino, California, to Prescott Arizona, to the family living in Colton for a while. All of which I did not know. Some of the gun fights in Dodge City really happened by Bat who by this author killed more men than Wyatt, but also his brother Ed was killed as well. Through it all you get a look at a different side of the west. Of men not wanting to stay put in one town and how Wyatt ending up Tombstone to help and be with his brother Virgil and two other brothers. This all before the O.K. Corral afterwards and a few travels he ends up back in Dodge City along with Bat and some other gunslingers. Men that people of the town new were there to take back the town from a group who were getting rid of the old or who they believed should be gone. I don’t have to tell you how it turned out with not a shot fired. Later Wyatt would go back to California, and Bat would end up in New York first as a deputy U.S. Marshall then later and the most surprising part of the whole book a sports writer, and according to some of the ones who were at the top of their game Damon Runyon he was a real good one. Runyon also wrote Guys and Dolls and dedicated a character in the story after Masterson whom he became friends with. Overall this is a very good book with a lot of information. The author did his research and clarifies as much as possible from past mistakes from previous books who have tried to write about this time and people. I got this book from netgalley.com. Follow us at www.1rad-readerreviews.com