
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
During the 1920s, dozens of expeditions scoured the Chinese and Tibetan wilderness in search of the panda bear, a beast that many believed did not exist. When the two eldest sons of President Theodore Roosevelt sought the bear in 1928, they had little hope of success. Together with a team of scientists and naturalists, they accomplished what a decade of explorers could not, ultimately introducing the panda to the West. In the process, they documented a vanishing world and set off a new era of conservation biology.
By: Nathalia Holt
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'Til Murder Do Us Part
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Bryan Burrough
- Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins
- Original Recording
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The case began in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1922 and lasted for over a decade. The killer has never been found, and the case continues to fascinate true-crime aficianados. A bon vivant Episcopal minister, a not-so-virginal soprano in his choir. The wealthy wife. Her oddball brother. Their furtive maid. The snooping congregants. The bumbling detectives. And in the denouement, a trial, one of the more notable of America’s Jazz Age, covered by the likes of Damon Runyon, Dorothy Dix and James Thurber. All of it hanging on the dramatic testimony of a single, strange witness.
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New Brunswick, NJ, here's your audio....
- By Christina -- Audible on 10-17-19
By: Bryan Burrough
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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
- Narrated by: Scott Ellsworth
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- 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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Public Enemies
- America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Campbell Scott
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Abridged
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In Public Enemies, Bryan Burrough strips away a thick layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to tell the full story of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and an assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers.
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Need the unabridged version
- By Craig Hansen on 07-28-04
By: Bryan Burrough
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Million Dollar Gift
- Ross Bentley's Hidden Gift, Book 1
- By: Ian Somers
- Narrated by: James Rottger
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Ross Bentley has a gift – he can move things with his mind. Ross has always known he was different, but he’s kept his talent secret, even from those closest to him. Everything changes when he hears about a contest called The Million Dollar Gift – a wealthy businessman has pledged a million dollars to anyone who can prove they have superhuman powers. It’s too good a chance to miss …
By: Ian Somers
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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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Launching Liberty
- The Epic Race to Build the Ships that Took America to War
- By: Doug Most
- Narrated by: Chris Henry Coffey
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Launching Liberty tells the remarkable story of how FDR partnered with private businessmen to begin the production of cargo freighters longer than a football field—ships he affectionately dubbed “ugly ducklings.” These colossal Liberty Ships took over six months to build at the start of his $350 million emergency shipbuilding program, far too long. The government turned to Henry Kaiser, the man who had delivered the Boulder Dam ahead of schedule and under budget, but had never built a ship in his life.
By: Doug Most
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Sea of Grass
- The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie
- By: Dave Hage, Josephine Marcotty
- Narrated by: Sandra Murphy, George Newbern
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The North American prairie is an ecological marvel, a lush carpet of grass that stretches to the horizon, and home to some of the nation’s most iconic creatures—bison, elk, wolves, pronghorn, prairie dogs, and bald eagles. Plants, microbes, and animals together made the grasslands one of the richest ecosystems on Earth and a massive carbon sink, but the constant expansion of agriculture threatens what remains.
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Enlightening and informative to all people living on the earth
- By Norma Ward on 06-14-25
By: Dave Hage, and others
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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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Anonymous Male
- A Life Among Spies
- By: Christopher Whitcomb
- Narrated by: Christopher Whitcomb
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In September 2001, Christopher Whitcomb was the most visible FBI agent in the world. His bestselling memoir, Cold Zero, had led to novels, articles in GQ, and op-eds in The New York Times. He appeared on Imus in the Morning, Larry King, and Meet the Press; he was nominated for a Peabody reporting for CNBC. He played poker with Brad Pitt while contracting for the CIA.
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The Martians
- The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America
- By: David Baron
- Narrated by: Rob Greenbaum
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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In the early 1900s, many Americans actually believed we had discovered intelligent life on Mars, as bestselling science writer David Baron chronicles in The Martians, his truly bizarre tale of a nation swept up in Mars mania. At the center of Baron's historical drama is Percival Lowell, the Boston Brahmin and Harvard scion, who observed "canals" etched into the surface of Mars. Lowell devised a grand theory that the red planet was home to a utopian society that had built gargantuan ditches to funnel precious meltwater from the polar icecaps to desert farms and oasis cities.
By: David Baron
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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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Smaller points
- By Anonymous User on 07-05-25
By: W. Henry Sledge
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1861
- The Lost Peace
- By: Jay Winik
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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1861: The Lost Peace is the story of President Lincoln’s difficult and courageous decision at a time when the country wrestled with deep moral questions of epic proportions.
By: Jay Winik
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Allies at War
- How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World
- By: Tim Bouverie
- Narrated by: Tim Bouverie
- Length: 25 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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After the fall of France in June 1940, all that stood between Adolf Hitler and total victory was a narrow stretch of water and the defiance of the British people. Desperate for allies, Winston Churchill did everything he could to bring the United States into the conflict, drive the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany apart, and persuade neutral countries to resist German domination. By early 1942, after the German invasion of Russia and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the British-Soviet-American alliance was in place.
By: Tim Bouverie
Lest we forget the things we did not remember.
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