Reviews for Draw: The Greatest Gunfights of the American West

The average rating for Draw: The Greatest Gunfights of the American West based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-06-27 00:00:00 Aaron Urquidez Pretty good book. This is a set of stories doing it's best to relate factual tales of gun fights in the American west. Of course few of these gun fights were the "classical Hollywood shootout. Some writers confidently state that one of these, "two men meet in the street and draw" fights never happened. Actually a couple did. I already knew of "Bill" (James Butler)Hickok's shoot out over a watch. That story isn't in this book, but Jim Levy's is. Here you'll find outlaws, lawmen, back-shooters....ladies of the evening and all manner of other characters. It's a pretty good book making no claims to be the end all and be all of historical documents it still has reliable sources. If you like westerns and Western History or either, you'll probably like this one.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-09-06 00:00:00 Nory Barronsson I have a deep and unending love of westerns. There's something so unbelievable about the truth behind the legends of that time, the fact that so many were drawn from what truly happened and nowhere near as embellished as one might think. There's a wildness to the stories, and yes, a romance even behind the crazed sociopaths that ran across the country and territories with guns blazing. So many thought they were in the right - so many courts acquitted them accordingly. How was this only a few generations ago? Draw: The Greatest Gunfights of the American West is a surprisingly slim volume that goes into far more detail than one might expect. Between these pages are indeed summaries of the greatest gunfights, histories of those involved, and a bit of speculation on the part of the author about the circumstances. There are fascinating asides now and then, and even a few pictures. I learned a lot from this volume, as it seeks to dig into more than just the 'old favorites'. I was particularly pleased to see the absurd story of the execution of Black Jack Ketchum included, as his has a particularly gruesome ending that never ceases to amuse. This book is darkly humorous, and I read it with the same surprise I tend to view these stories. It was so recent in the past, and so insane a time. How many died over trivial things? How many were shot just for snoring too loud, or by accident? I'm only amazed that there weren't more civilian casualties in all the mad shoot-outs. Then again, the civilians more often than not were involved in them... Isn't it incredible we lived through such a time?