Wyatt Earp

April 8, 2013
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.

May 15, 2013
Isenberg (History/Temple Univ.; Mining California: An Ecological History, 2005, etc.) examines the life and legend of the famous lawman/liar/faro dealer/boxing referee/advisor on Western movies. This is likely the only biography of Wyatt Earp (1848-1929) that compares him with Henry, not Jesse, James. Although he focuses on Earp's biography--with both actual and Earp-concocted facts--the author pauses periodically to provide historical context and offer literary and other analogies. Melville has a cameo, as do Damon and Pythias and Prince Hal. Even Freud (unnamed) appears in an allusion to the Colt Buntline Special as phallic symbol. Isenberg also alludes continually to Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, Stuart Lake's 1931 biography that told Earp's story mostly the way he'd wanted it told--i.e., falsely. Isenberg carefully separates the historic from the hysterical, examines documents, evaluates sources critically and eventually scrapes away from Earp's image the gilding that cultural history has applied. Earp was only marginally different from the men he--in company with a couple of his brothers and tubercular Doc Holliday--helped shoot near (not in, the author assures us) the O.K. Corral. (Isenberg's account of the 30-second battle consumes only a couple of pages.) The author notes that, later, Earp had been evanescing, but in 1896 he emerged to referee--in clearly corrupt fashion--a big boxing match. This brought his name back, and in the emerging era of mass media, Earp found he could not flee his notoriety. So he decided to cash in on it. After his death, the flood of films and books and TV shows has never really subsided. Isenberg shows us Earp as an early Jay Gatsby, reinventing himself continually. Thorough research enriches the paint in this convincing and often unflattering portrait.

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June 1, 2013

Isenberg (history, Temple Univ.; Mining California: An Ecological History) pulls no punches in his critical examination of the image of Wyatt Earp--best known for his shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, in 1881--as a heroic lawman. Earp was also a gambler who fixed faro games and a salesman who painted bricks yellow and sold them as "gold." Laying bare many of the myths and fictions about Earp in popular culture, Isenberg shows him to have operated on both sides of the law for most of his life. In later years, Earp actually worked with filmmakers and actors as an adviser on Westerns, and in so doing found the means to reinterpret his checkered past in a highly favorable light that contributed, after his death, to myths about the heroic American West. The O.K. Corral shootout and its legal aftermath are detailed in a very matter-of-fact manner here. The most compelling part of the book is the demonstration that Earp was often at his best as a confidence man and faro dealer, able to reinvent himself as needed. The role of Josephine Marcus, later Earp's wife, as a contributing factor in the famous gunfight is considered by Isenberg but not argued as far as in Ann Kirschner's recent Lady at the O.K. Corral. VERDICT Recommended for academic and independent readers wishing to know both the dark and darker sides of this controversial Western icon.--Nathan Bender, Albany Cty. P.L., Laramie, WY

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2013
Wyatt Earp has been the subject of numerous films, biographies, and even a weekly television series. Most of these serve to embellish his reputation as an upholder of law and order and as a man who helped tame raucous frontier towns. Isenberg, a historian at Temple University, is determined to demolish that image, and he largely succeeds. As portrayed here, Earp was an ambitious, hot-tempered, and restless striver, who spent much of his career operating on both sides of the law. As a youth, he fled Arkansas to avoid a trial for horse thievery. As he moved across the West, Earp combined law enforcement with gambling, fronting for prostitutes, and killing one of the assassins of his brother in cold blood. As for the famous gunfight at the OK Corral, Isenberg asserts that political and personal animosities were more important than law enforcement. Still, Earp lived a long, adventurous life, and that seems to get lost as Isenberg recites his laundry list of misdeeds, so this is a useful but often disappointing revisionist biography.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)