cover image Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life

Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life

Andrew C. Isenberg. Hill and Wang, $30 (304p) ISBN 978-0-809-09500-1

On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, deputy sheriff Wyatt Earp and his brothers Virgil and Morgan, along with Doc Holliday, confronted Ike and Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury, and Billy Claiborne at the O.K. Corral, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, resulting in one of the most legendary shootouts in Wild West history. Though Wyatt would be known by posterity primarily for his involvement in that famous showdown, Isenberg (Mining California) focuses in this plodding biography on the lawman’s life before and after O.K. The Temple University historian reveals Wyatt to have been a master of self-invention, creating a new identity for himself as he moved restlessly from one frontier town to the next, and finally on to Hollywood. He further dispels much of the romance surrounding Wyatt, uncovering some of the more ignominious traits he had developed by the early 1870s, including “an attraction to the underworld of petty crime, an impulse to seize opportunities regardless of the legal consequences, and a disposition to flee when the situation became untenable.” Wyatt is without a doubt a dynamic and interesting character, but Isenberg’s bio is as spiritless as a Wild West ghost town. Map. (July)