
The Gunfighters
How Texas Made the West Wild
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Narrated by:
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Fred Sanders
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By:
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Bryan Burrough
About this listen
“One hell of a good read.”—The New York Times
"One of the most important books written on the American West in many years."—True West Magazine
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Big Rich and Forget the Alamo comes an epic reconsideration of the time and place that spawned America’s most legendary gunfighters, from Jesse James and Billy the Kid to Butch and Sundance
The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.
Texas was born in violence, on two fronts, with Mexico to the south and the Comanche to the north. The Colt revolver first caught on with the Texas Rangers. Southern dueling culture transformed into something wilder and less organized in the Lone Star State. The collapse of the Confederacy and the presence of a thin veneer of Northern occupiers turned the heat up further. And the explosion in the cattle business after the war took that violence and pumped it out from Texas across the whole of the West. The stampede of longhorn cattle brought with it an assortment of rustlers, hustlers, gamblers, and freelance lawmen who carried a trigger-happy honor culture into a widening gyre, a veritable blood meridian. When the first newspapermen and audiences discovered what good copy this all was, the flywheel of mythmaking started spinning. It’s never stopped.
The Gunfighters brilliantly sifts the lies from the truth, giving both elements their due. And the truth is sufficiently wild for any but the most unhinged tastes. All the legendary figures are here, and their escapades are told with great flair—good, bad, and ugly. Like all great stories, this one has a rousing end—as the railroads and the settlers close off the open spaces for good, the last of the breed, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, really do get on a boat for South America, ending their era in a blaze of glory. Burrough knits these histories together into something much deeper and more provocative than simply the sum of its parts. To understand the truth of the Wild West is to understand a crucial dimension of the American story.
©2025 Bryan Burrough (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A captivating exploration of the Wild West, delving into the era of gunfighters with literary flair and historical depth . . . Burrough expertly separates fact from folklore . . . A fascinating work of history that challenges readers to reconsider the role of the West’s legendary gunfighters in shaping the identity of the United States.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“A treat for Western history buffs who don’t mind plenty of debunking along the way.”—Kirkus
“The Gunfighters has all the propulsive energy and high tension of a Wild-West yarn. But it has the distinction of being (mostly) true. Burrough takes on the mythic characters of the West with his characteristic wit, thoughtfulness, and eye for the absurd. He tells this story as only a loving—but conflicted—son of Texas could.”—Beverly Gage, John Lewis Gaddis Professor of History at Yale and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
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Story
The Undiscovered Country strips away the layers of myth to reveal the true story of the American West. From the forests of Pennsylvania and Kentucky to the snow-crested California Sierras, and from the harsh deserts of the Southwest to the buffalo range of the Great Plains, Paul Andrew Hutton masterfully chronicles a story that defined America and its people. From Braddock’s 1755 defeat to the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, he unfolds a grand narrative steeped in romantic impulses and tragic consequences.
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The Big Rich
- The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: James Jenner
- Length: 22 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author Bryan Burrough reveals how four Texas oil tycoons transformed America. Rising from humble beginnings through hard work and shrewd dealings, they shifted the balance of power in American politics. While hobnobbing with movie stars and presidents, the Big Rich also created the legend of the swaggering Texas oilman with island hideaways and sprawling ranches.
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Big, Sordid, Fascinating, PoliticallyCorrect
- By Darkcoffee on 11-09-09
By: Bryan Burrough
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Days of Rage
- America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling author of Public Enemies and The Big Rich, an explosive account of the decade-long battle between the FBI and the homegrown revolutionary movements of the 1970s. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in a single revolutionary underground, dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government. The FBI’s response to the leftist revolutionary counterculture has not been treated kindly by history, and in hindsight many of its efforts seem almost comically ineffectual, if not criminal in themselves.
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Amazing treatment of tough history
- By Steven on 05-13-15
By: Bryan Burrough
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Dinner with King Tut
- How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations
- By: Sam Kean
- Narrated by: Derek Shetterly
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Whether it’s the mighty pyramids of Egypt or the majestic temples of Mexico, we have a good idea of what the past looked like. But what about our other senses: The tang of Roman fish sauce and the springy crust of Egyptian sourdough? The boom of medieval cannons and the clash of Viking swords? The frenzied plays of an Aztec ballgame...and the chilling reality that the losers might also lose their lives?
By: Sam Kean
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Strife!
- Asia's Inevitable and (Un)Avoidable Descent into World War II
- By: John R. Huber
- Narrated by: Ty Lasky
- Length: 19 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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History is often told through the lens of battles and treaties, but Strife in Asia! delves deeper—unraveling the relentless chain of events that pushed the region toward war. From the Opium Wars to the rise of Japanese militarism, this book examines the political, economic, and ideological forces that made conflict inevitable. More than just an analysis, Strife in Asia! blends rigorous scholarship with gripping narrative. Each chapter opens with a human perspective—vivid, personal accounts that capture the fear, resilience, and suffering of those swept up in history’s currents.
By: John R. Huber
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Midnight on the Potomac
- The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America
- By: Scott Ellsworth
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Told with a thrilling pace, New York Times bestselling author and historian Scott Ellsworth has written the most compelling new book about the Civil War in years. Focusing on the last, desperate months of the war, when the outcome was far from certain, Midnight on the Potomac is a story of titanic battles, political upheaval, and the long-forgotten Confederate terror war against the loyal citizens of the North.
By: Scott Ellsworth
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Visual Friendlies, Tally Target
- How Close Air Support in the War on Terror Changed the Way America Made War: Volume I: Invasions
- By: Ethan Brown
- Narrated by: Shawn Compton
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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With a new century and a new enemy came a new kind of war: low intensity and civilian-dominated, blending austere rural and dense urban environments alike. Into this new kind of war, the American military launched two invasions against terrorist networks and military rivals, relying on airpower—close air support (CAS)—at a scale never before seen.
By: Ethan Brown
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Submersed
- Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines
- By: Matthew Gavin Frank
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Submersed begins with an investigation into the beguiling subculture of DIY submersible obsessives: men and women—but mostly men—who are so compelled to sink into the deep sea that they become amateur backyard submarine-builders. Matthew Gavin Frank explores the origins of the human compulsion to sink to depth, from the diving bells of Aristotle and Alexander the Great to the Confederate H. L. Hunley, which became the first submersible to sink an enemy warship before itself being sunk during the Civil War.
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The Coming Storm
- Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History
- By: Odd Arne Westad
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The Coming Storm is a bracing, powerful book on the interventions necessary to prevent a cataclysm akin to the First World War, which left 40 million dead and wounded worldwide. As Westad writes, “If there are lessons from history, now is the time when we need to heed them, so that we do not end up in another Great Power war because of the fatal combinations of jingoism, fear, fatalism, and sheer stupidity that set off the first major war of the 20th century.”
By: Odd Arne Westad
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The Old Breed... The Complete Story Revealed
- A Father, a Son, and How WWII in the Pacific Shaped Their Lives
- By: W. Henry Sledge
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The Old Breed... The Complete Story Revealed brings to life an abundance of new material from the original manuscript of Eugene Sledge's classic memoir With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa. By interspersing his own personal anecdotes throughout, Henry Sledge takes his father's work and gives it newfound context, sharing memories of conversations between father and son. The result is a flowing narrative that portrays an intimate look at a WWII veteran and his struggles to adapt to civilian life following the war.
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his son adds to Sledgehammer's legacy
- By David Deehl on 06-14-25
By: W. Henry Sledge
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Taking Midway
- Naval Warfare, Secret Codes, and the Battle That Turned the Tide of World War II
- By: Martin Dugard
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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From Martin Dugard, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series—with more than twelve million copies sold—comes a fast-paced, dramatic account of the famous yet little understood battle that turned the tide of World War II.
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Great way to learn history
- By Anonymous User on 05-27-25
By: Martin Dugard
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Captain Kidd
- A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal
- By: Samuel Marquis
- Narrated by: Shawn Compton
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Captain William Kidd stands as one of the most notorious "pirate" outlaws ever, but his legend is tainted by a bed of lies. Having captivated imaginations for more than three hundred years and inspired many stories about pirates, troubling questions remain. Was he really a criminal or is the truth more inconvenient: that he was a buccaneer's worst nightmare, a revered pirate hunter turned fall guy for scheming politicians?
By: Samuel Marquis
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