Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride » (Reprint)

Michael Wallis is the bestselling author of Route 66, Billy the Kid, Pretty Boy, and David Crockett. He hosts the PBS series American Roads. He plays The Sheriff in the animated Pixar feature Cars. He lives with his wife in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Award-winning historian Michael Wallis has spent several years re-creating the rich, anecdotal saga of Billy the Kid (1859-1881), a deeply mythologized young man who became a legend in his own time and yet remains an enigma to this day. This new biography separates myth from reality and presents an unforgettable portrait of this brief and violent life.

Publishers Weekly

The boy who would become Billy the Kid (1859-1881) was born Henry McCarty, perhaps in the Irish immigrant wards of New York City. Not much is known about his parents, and it's difficult to trace his whereabouts until his family turned up in Silver City, Colo., in the early 1870s. Both the facts and the legend pick up in 1877, when Henry-already known to some under the alias Kid-shot a man who was bullying him and began a life on the run. Wallis's reconstruction of the Kid's exploits is engrossing. But even more, Wallis (Route 66) shows Billy the Kid as a product of his era, one of profound social dislocation. Billy the Kid was, indeed, only the most legendary of a generation of "desperate men" who knew how to handle a gun. At the same time, a new kind of sensationalist journalism was being created, and reporters were more than happy to contribute to the creation of a myth. Wallis, the host of PBS's new American Roads, writes clean prose, occasionally enlivened by a particularly lovely turn of phrase ("the liquid rustle of cottonwood leaves"). Over the decades, countless books have been written about the infamous outlaw, and this is surely one of the best. 60 illus. (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Preface     xi
Personal Introduction     xiii
Map: Billy the Kid Country     xviii
Prologue: Quien Es?     1
Once upon a Time     5
On the Trail     13
Wichita     19
Brotherhood of the Gun     27
Contagious War     35
Pulp Fiction     41
Silver Threads Among the Gold     51
Land of Little Time     59
One Step over the Line     71
Gone on the Scout     81
Saddle Tramp     91
Kid Antrim     99
First Blood     109
At Large     119
Banditti     127
Seven Rivers     139
Billy Bonney     151
Eye of the Storm     159
Dream Killers     167
The Unfortunate War Spawns the Myth     181
Endless War     193
Firestorm     209
Devil or Angel     219
El Chivato     233
Epilogue: Billy's Never-ending Ride     249
Notes     251
Bibliography     297
Acknowledgments     309
Index     313