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The Amazon Store at MillionDollarPetPix.com ( In association with Amazon.com )Death of a Gunfighter: The Quest for Jack Slade, The West's Most Elusive Legendby: Dan Rottenberg  List Price: $29.95 Amazon.com's Price: $19.77 You Save: $10.18 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 910 EAN: 9781594160707 Edition: 1 ISBN: 1594160708 Label: Westholme Publishing Manufacturer: Westholme Publishing Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 536 Publication Date: October 24, 2008 Publisher: Westholme Publishing Studio: Westholme Publishing Related Items:
Editorial Review: Product Description: The Truth Behind the Tragic Hero Who Helped Save the Union and Created the Myth of the American Gunslinger "There was such magic in that name, SLADE! I stood always ready to drop any subject in hand, to listen to something new about Slade. . . . Slade was at once the most bloody, the most dangerous and the most valuable citizen that inhabited the savage fastnesses of the mountains."--Mark Twain, Roughing It In 1859, as the United States careened toward civil war, Washington's only northern link with America's richest state, California, was a stagecoach line operating between Missouri and the Pacific. Yet the stage line was plagued by outlaws and hostile Indians. At this critical moment, the company enlisted a former wagon train captain to clean up its most dangerous division. Over the next three years, Jack Slade exceeded his employers' wildest dreams, capturing bandits and horse thieves and driving away gangs. He kept the stagecoaches and the U.S. Mail running, and helped launch the Pony Express, securing California and its gold for the Union. Across the Great Plains he became known as "The Law West of Kearny." Slade's legend grew when he was shot and left for dead, only to survive and exact revenge on his would-be killer. But once Slade had restored the peace, his life descended into an alcoholic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde nightmare, transforming him from a courageous leader, charming gentleman, and devoted husband into a vicious, quicktriggered ruffian, who finally lost his life at the hands of vigilantes. Since Slade's death in 1864, persistent myths and stories have defied the efforts of writers and historians to capture the real Jack Slade. Despite his notoriety and place in history as the first celebrity gunfighter, the pieces of Slade's fascinating life--including his marriage to the beautiful Maria Virginia--have remained scattered and hidden. In Death of a Gunfighter: The Quest for Jack Slade, the West's Most Elusive Legend, journalist Dan Rottenberg assembles more than fifty years of research to reveal the true story of Jack Slade, one of America's greatest tragic heroes. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - review, Death of a GunfighterI loved the book because it is true western history. It describes places I have seen, but did'nt know the historical significance. The book kept me interested from beginning to end, and now I want to take a road trip to see this part of the USA with new insight. Rating: - Not the Lone RangerJack Slade was no Lone Ranger but a roughneck teamster who opened the Overland Trail from Missouri to California, creating a vital link between Washington and the California gold fields. A ruthless defender of his freight lines and the short-lived Pony Express, his violent, drunken binges finally bought about his own end. Of two personalities, Jack Slade killed some and was feared by many. Mark Twain mythologized him as a gunslinger. Yet the stagecoach passengers who stopped at his ... Read More Rating: - Death of a GunfighterThis book provides a great insight into that part of the U.S. lying between Missouri and California in the years before the Civil War. There were lots of heroes, not just Jack Slade. The men who sacrificed their personal finances to buy the stagecoaches from New Hampshire, to find drivers willing to risk their lives to carry people and mail, to establish roads, to build stations every 12 miles or so to accommodate the passengers, to obtain horses to be kept at each station == was an enormous undertaking. ... Read More Rating: - Frontier Capitalism and a Real GunmanThis a book that should appeal to anyone who's interested in economic history or general American history. Like the biographers who tackle Shakespeare, Rottenberg is writing about someone who hasn't left us a lot of information. He fills in the gaps-- as the Shakespeareans do-- by giving us a picture of the kind of things his subject was doing. In the Shakespeare biographies, we get a picture of the London stage in Elizabethen times. Rottenberg gives us engaging chapters on frontier capitalism ... Read More Rating:  - The Prototype Jack Slade was the prototype of the American Western Outlaw. At one point, he was a trusted vilgilante dealing harsh justice in a harsh world (check out the advert inside the book for men for the Pony Express, where it declares a preference for "orphans"). On the other-hand, Jack Slade was a murderous, drunken sort. He is hard to pin down, and thus was a legendary character, even during his life. Mark Twain's infatuation with Slade is constantly being referred to. And it makes sense that Twain would use elements ... Read More 
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