America’s Favorite Gunfighters and the Birth of the Old West Podcast By cover art

America’s Favorite Gunfighters and the Birth of the Old West

America’s Favorite Gunfighters and the Birth of the Old West

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America loves the Western. Stories about frontier towns, outlaws and lawmen, and—most of all—killing. How did the myth and legend of the gunfighter come to permeate the U.S.? Were there rules to gunfights? How did you become famous by killing people? Did Texas, yes Texas, make all this possible?


We’ll answer those questions in this episode of the show as we discuss the new book The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild. It’s the work of returning guest (and Texan) Bryan Burrough.


  • Texas is both the West and the South
  • What made Texas so violent
  • What, exactly, is a gunfighter?
  • The rules of the duel
  • “Boys, I’m killed”
  • How to win friends while killin’ people
  • “What is more equalizing than a man alone with a gun?”
  • Olive, Isom Prentice
  • Historiography of the gunfighter
  • Modern bank robbers are boring
  • The cattle business is the perfect vehicle for violence
  • The future belongs ... to pirates?


Buy The Gunfighters from an independent bookstore or from Amazon

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