In a violent half-minute, in a gunfight near the O.K. Corral, Wyatt Earp became a legend. He was thirty-three. He died forty-eight years later, in Hollywood, where he worked as an advisor on film westerns. He'd had firsthand experience in the creation of American myth, and in this remarkable volume, Allen Barra illuminates fully the man who strode into our national imagination, as well as the myths that have continually reinvented him in history,...

Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves appears as one of "eight notable Oklahomans," the "most feared U.S. marshal in the Indian country." That Reeves was also an African American who had spent his early life as a slave in Arkansas and Texas makes his accomplishments all the more remarkable. Bucking the odds ("I'm sorry, we didn't keep black people's history," a clerk at one of Oklahoma's local historical societies answered a query), Art T. Burton sifts...

The astounding true story of the U.S. Marshal who tracked down the world's most evil criminals.

This revealing first person narrative, by one of the founders of the Witness Protection Program and a personal protector to more than five hundred informants, offers an eye opening, dead on authentic perspective on the safeguard institution. How did law enforcement's frustration with the criminal underworld and a serpentine series of hit or miss rules and mistakes give rise to one of the most significant and endlessly fascinating government run programs...

A portrait of the iconic nineteenth-century law officer separates fact from fiction while exploring Earp's role in creating his own myths, revealing his lesser-known activities as a thief, gambler, and confidence man.