A Perfect Pair

(I have been traveling a lot this summer, and the between travel time has been very busy.  Hopefully I can spend a little more time uptading this blog going forward.)
 
     Sometimes I read for information; sometimes I read for pleasure; and sometimes I am lucky to find a bit of each in the same book.  Once in a very, very great while I find two such books that are informative, most pleasurable to read, and compliment each other.  This year I found (by watching BookTV one Sunday morning and catching an article in the NYTimes another day) two books providing to me this unusual pleasure: "Doc" and "The Last Gunfight."

You can read a full summary of each book at Amazon or elsewhere on the internet, but here is my perspective on these two coincidentally related books.

 
What you know, or think you know, about John Henry Holliday, about Virgel, Warren, Morgan, James and Wyatt Earp, and about Bat, James, and Ed Masterson is likely misinformation.  After the violent events in Tombstone, there were many sensationalized accounts of the various involved characters, often embellished by the principles themselves, and the myths have been perpetuated by Hollywood over the years.  These books use original research from the surprisingly large volume of notes, newspaper articles, and official records scattered in various libraries and historical institutions across the country to reconstruct the personality, character, and actions of these players.

 
Although these books were written by very different authors over the same period of time, they chronologically dovetailed perfectly.  Russell has a PhD in biological anthropology from the University of Michigan and has taught anatomy to dental students. Her book is a biography of the most interesting character of John Henry "Doc" Holliday, beginning with his birth, but ending with his time in Dodge City, Kansas.  It notes his departure for Arizona, but goes no further.  We know at this point (even if we have not read Guinn's book) that he will achieve fame in Tombstone (on a street, at the edge of a vacant lot, sort of close to the OK Corral.)  It is inclusive of the Earp and Masterson brothers, as they are an integral part of his life in Dodge City, and also is quite inclusive of the women who for the most part were informal partners or common law wives of these men.
 

Guinn was a school teacher, then newspaper journalist, and finally published author (I believe his first major book concerned the outlaw couple Bonnie and Clyde.)  Rather than a biography, "Gunfight" is a story of Tombstone, Arizona; its origin, rise, and fall (and then re-emergence as a tourist trap.)  As it happens, these same characters (Holliday, the Earp brothers, and the Masterson brothers) also populate the history and legend of Tombstone, and it brings to a conclusion Doc's biography..  (Unlike Russell, Guinn doesn't have as much to say about the women.)  His followup extends to the final days of Wyatt in Los Angeles, and Doc and Bat in Colorado, as well as the literary and film spinoffs that followed for the next century.

As far as I can discern, these writers worked completely independently, were coincidentally both published (by different houses) in May 2011, and by apparently blind happenstance one concluded almost exactly where the other began.  They agree for the most part on the personality and character traits of Doc and the Earp brothers.
  

The books are written in different style.  "Doc" captured my attention from the first page.  "Gunfight" started slow (and dry), but quickly evolved into a "good read" of its own.  I stayed up way too late several nights with these books.  I cannot think of any of my friends who will not find these historical accounts of America's "last frontier" most enjoyable - and informative to boot.

Doc is buried in an historical cemetery on a hill above Glenwood Springs, Colorado, where I took this picture a couple of years ago.  The cemetery is only accessible via a switchback trail from a small park on a street below the hill.