If we want to be honest with ourselves, the reason we, the gunfighter-enthused, love westerns so much is often, if not now than at our point of beginning, all because of one hero or another gunning down some bad guys. In simple terms, it’s the excitement of the gun duel that really brings us to the show. And Joseph Rosa, in his final book on Wild Bill, really presents a fun volume in analyzing the most dangerous and celebrated moments in his life.
Rosa gives step-by-step, excruciating detail of each and every gunfight that we have recorded for the gunman known as Wild Bill. He gives floor plans and movement-by-movement accounts of where a particular person was standing and where they moved to. He shows you just where Wild Bill was positioned, and where his adversaries stood.
In addition, he gives you the background to each encounter and surrounds each account with context for the diagraming. Plus, beyond just the accounts of the fights, Rosa educates the reader with a complete background on what kinds of guns Hickok used, how he carried them, and how he used them. This volume is a very intentional effort at giving the reader a clear view of what it meant to say that Wild Bill Hickok was a gunfighter.
This one is also just over two-hundred pages, but utilizes a slightly larger font than the other books. It’s a pretty quick easy read, given the font combined with the pictures and diagrams, but certainly worth owning. Though it’s a quick read, there’s plenty to study over, and the time-value in this book is really in the time you’ll spend understanding the fights scenarios and feeling a little bit more what Hickok himself might have felt.
Though it’s the last of the four books Rosa wrote on Wild Bill, it’s probably my favorite follow up, simply based on the fun of breaking down the gunfights. Definitely get this one and enjoy going over the real-life exploits of a man who inspired so many wild west legends.
Handy With A Gun...! 