Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and a Reckoning in Tombstone

This rollicking account from historian Gardner (The Earth Is All That Lasts) revisits the Wild West exploits of Wyatt Earp, an itinerant policeman known for his coolheadedness, and Doc Holliday, a part-time dentist and full-time gambling addict. Holliday saved Wyatt from getting jumped in Dodge City in 1878, and later became a regular in the Earp posse in Tombstone, Ariz., where Wyatt and his brothers Virgil and Morgan became lawmen. There they squared off against a gang known as the Cowboys, eventually precipitating the shoot-out at the OK Corral. The Earps and Holliday prevailed, but the Cowboys later assassinated Morgan, provoking the Earps and Holliday to a monthlong vengeance campaign that made national headlines. Gardner’s retelling of this famous incident paints a colorful, atmospheric panorama of the Wild West as an archipelago of saloons, gambling dens, and whorehouses where brutal violence was status quo. Gardner conveys it all in two-fisted prose that smacks of a Hollywood western; while he brings some nuance to the tale—highlighting, for instance, that Wyatt pivoted easily between lawbreaker and lawman—he still finds a lot to admire about the duo (“Their odd but endearing friendship [is] a bona fide saga if there ever was one”). The result is a raucous and entertaining slice of Americana. (Nov.)