Here are 100 books that The Life of John Wesley Hardin fans have personally recommended if you like
The Life of John Wesley Hardin.
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I wrote my first cover story on climate change circa 1996, when the computer modeling made clear what would happen. Then I began to see clear physical evidence that the planet was warming, and not much was being written about it outside academic circles. That led to the book Feeling the Heat. I recruited a bunch of experienced environmental journalists, sent them around the world, and they came back with very detailed and important reporting based on what they’d seen—melting glaciers, rising seas, changing ecosystems.
There are many media depictions of Deadwood, including in a popular HBO series with a lot of swearing in it. This book is fascinating because it’s a report by an eyewitness. Want to know what an evening was like at Al Swearengen’s Gem Theater, portrayed in the show? The Gem was “a clangorous, tangling, insidious part of Deadwood’s nightly life,” Bennett tells us.
Deadwood in the late 1800's was a rowdy mining town where fortunes were made overnight (and guarded with a Winchester). Local characters like Cold Deck Johnny, Slippery Sam, and Swill Barrel Jimmy rubbed elbows with the infamous Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickock. Preacher Smith, a "sky pilot without a compass" tried to keep everyone's souls in order while the author's father, Judge Bennett, upheld the law. The author grew up along with the town, and saw it change from a semi-permanent miner's camp to a real town when the railroad came. Full of real wild west exploits and notorious…
I wrote my first cover story on climate change circa 1996, when the computer modeling made clear what would happen. Then I began to see clear physical evidence that the planet was warming, and not much was being written about it outside academic circles. That led to the book Feeling the Heat. I recruited a bunch of experienced environmental journalists, sent them around the world, and they came back with very detailed and important reporting based on what they’d seen—melting glaciers, rising seas, changing ecosystems.
Like many of the period books, this one has to be seen in context. It was written just eight months after Garrett shot William Bonney, so the story is at least fresh. But subsequent scholars have found the story to be full of holes and self-serving versions of history. But it makes fascinating reading, because shooter and victim had a history. According to Garrett, the Kid’s last words were in Spanish, “Quien es?” (“Who is it?”)
Billy, The Kid, The Noted Desperado of the Southwest, Whose Deeds of Daring and Blood made His Name A Terror in New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico Few names evoke images of the lawless Old West as much as Billy the KId. He has been the subject of countless films, documentaries, TV show and books. Written by Sheriff Pat Garrett, the man who shot and killed William H. Bonney, the outlaw known as Billy the Kid, for many years this book was considered the definitive work on the life and death of Billy the Kid.
I wrote my first cover story on climate change circa 1996, when the computer modeling made clear what would happen. Then I began to see clear physical evidence that the planet was warming, and not much was being written about it outside academic circles. That led to the book Feeling the Heat. I recruited a bunch of experienced environmental journalists, sent them around the world, and they came back with very detailed and important reporting based on what they’d seen—melting glaciers, rising seas, changing ecosystems.
By some estimates, a quarter of the cowboys on the frontier were African-Americans. I tell some of their stories in my Outlaws book, but this is a much more complete account. Some of the prominent figures of color—Nat Love, Bass Reeves, Rufus Buck, Cherokee Bill, Jim Beckwourth—are portrayed in the 2021 Netflix movie They Harder They Fall, but any resemblance to actual history in that film is purely coincidental.
Who were the black cowboys? They were drovers, foremen, fiddlers, cowpunchers, cattle rustlers, cooks, and singers. They worked as wranglers, riders, ropers, bulldoggers, and bronc busters. They came from varied backgrounds - some grew up in slavery, while free blacks often got their start in Texas and Mexico. Most who joined the long trail drives were men, but black women also rode and worked on western ranches and farms.
The first overview of the subject in more than fifty years, Black Cowboys in the American West surveys the life and work of these cattle drivers from the years before the…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I wrote my first cover story on climate change circa 1996, when the computer modeling made clear what would happen. Then I began to see clear physical evidence that the planet was warming, and not much was being written about it outside academic circles. That led to the book Feeling the Heat. I recruited a bunch of experienced environmental journalists, sent them around the world, and they came back with very detailed and important reporting based on what they’d seen—melting glaciers, rising seas, changing ecosystems.
Why isn’t Soapy Smith better known? He was one of the most outrageous con men who ever lived, and would make a fine subject for a film. After a colorful life of fleecing people with three-card monte and bunco of every description (and getting run out of Denver), he turned up in Skagway, Alaska during the Gold Rush of 1896, and his gambling parlor took the miners for every penny. He was finally gunned down in 1898.
*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading Before there was Charles Ponzi, there was Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith II. The famed Old West con artist and gangster's criminal career ranged from Texas to Alaska, from Denver to the Klondike. But Smith was not predestined to become a criminal; if genetics and environment typically determine one’s destiny, he could have become a farmer, a lawyer, or a politician. He was born in Coweta County, Georgia, on November 2, 1860, to Jefferson Randolph Smith, Jr., and Emily Dawson Smith, right as the Southern society his family was a part of was…
As a moral philosopher, I ask practical questions: What kind of person am I becoming? What kind of life will I live? What loves, hopes, and fears drive my choices and shape my relationships? Character formation moves us from vice to virtue. It starts with self-reflection and moves toward intentional practice. Over time, those practices shape us and add up to a way of life. You will be formed—but how? Glittering Vices, like my job, combines my passions for character development and wise teaching. Enduring the fiery furnace of cancer treatment made formation an urgent, life-changing topic for me. I hope these books open your life to renewal too.
“Discipleship is becoming who Jesus would be if he were you.” This is Willard’s classic map of areas of spiritual transformation. The second half of the book gives his signature “how-to” guide for patterning your life and character after the life and character of Jesus Christ. The book tracks every aspect of our person and life: our will and choices, our thoughts and feelings, and our social relationships. A lifelong apprenticeship begins with intentional, practical steps. This book maps the terrain and guides each step forward, balancing grace and effort perfectly. See Johnson’s and Willard’s follow-up text (Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Experiments in Spiritual Transformation) for more practical wisdom from two seasoned spiritual masters.
Renovation of the Heart is an influential contribution from the late Dallas Willard that continues to break ground twenty years after its first release.
Helping us to understand how character is formed and where Jesus does his most significant work on our spiritual and emotional health, this book changed a generation’s mind about what it means to follow Jesus—not a matter of sin management but a matter of drawing near and letting ourselves be shaped into the eternal people of God.
With reflections on the book’s impact over its life from family, friends, and admirers of Dallas, and supplemental resources…
I am a teacher of primitive survival skills. As a young boy, I was fascinated with the concept of courage. At seven, I read the pseudo-biography of Wyatt Earp, a wonderfully written account of a courageous man. This book began my lifelong interest in Mr. Earp. Eventually, I met many of the giants in Western history research and accompanied them into the field. After 65 years of collecting the facts, I wanted to use my novelistic skills to portray the life and times of Wyatt Earp as best as the record shows.
The public was introduced to Wyatt Earp’s story by Walter Noble Burns and Stuart Lake around 1930, but the novelistic liberties taken by these two writers produced two books of fantasy. Other writers who reacted to this fiction swung to the other end of the spectrum and wrote damning indictments against Wyatt Earp. Tefertiller gives us the facts and leaves it to the reader to parse Wyatt Earp, the man.
I have visited many Sonoran Desert sites with Mr. Tefertiller, places where events in the Earp saga took place. There, we engaged in conversations and batted around ideas. I judge him to be a most reliable and dedicated researcher/writer.
"Quite impressive. I doubt if there has been or will be a more deeply researched and convincing account." --Evan Connell, author Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn "The book to end all Earp books--the most complete, and most meticulously researched." --Jack Burrows, author John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was "The most thoughtful, well-researched, and comprehensive account that has been written about the development and career of an Old-West lawman." --The Tombstone Tumbleweed "A great adventure story, and solid history." --Kirkus Reviews "A major contribution to the history of the American West. It provides the first…
The day the second atomic bomb was dropped, Clabe and Leora Wilson’s postman brought a telegram to their acreage near Perry, Iowa. One son was already in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Four more sons worked with their father, tenant farmers near Minburn until, one by…
Born in Texas, raised in Colorado, I’ve always had one foot in the working cowboy world and the other in the Rocky Mountains. I’m a member of the Western Writers of America, and I’ve summited all 54 fourteen-thousand foot peaks in Colorado. For a number of years, I worked with horses at a therapeutic riding center, as a barn manager. After that, I worked as an equine veterinary assistant, driving around with the vet in a pickup truck to doctor horses. Following that, I pursued the arts. Over the years, I’ve recorded and performed western/folk music (find me on Bandcamp), acted in western films (check my YouTube channel), and written western novels (Sunbury Press/Milford House).
I’ve been to the Tomboy Mine. All that’s left of the camp are old foundations in a rocky basin above timberline, surrounded by high peaks, 3,000 feet above Telluride. The only gold left behind is in the rich hues of a Colorado sunset. While the Tomboy may be gone, it’s the same view Harriet Fish Backus saw every day. Life at a remote mountain mine was full of “mishaps and makeshifts,” and she kept a diary of daily events. Nothing she writes is a dull description, nor is it the soaring purple prose of Victorian-era romanticism. Her account of mining life in 1906, from a woman’s perspective, detailing daily routines, friendships, and fears, is invaluable as a western author, to create believable female characters in the Old West.
A Colorado favorite, Tomboy Bride presents the first-hand account of a young pioneer woman and her life in a rough and tumble mining town of the Old West.
In 1906 at the age of twenty, Harriet Fish hopped on a train from Oakland, California, to the San Juan Mountains of Colorado in search of a new life as the bride of assayer George Backus. Together, the couple ventured forth to discover mining town life at the turn of the twentieth century, adjusting to dizzying elevation heights of 11,500 feet and all the hardships that come with it: limited water, rationed…
I love a good story that crosses genres; seeing where they mesh together, playing with where they differ, and letting the various parts spark into a whole that’s greater still. Though my writing usually takes place in the “real” everyday world, I often introduce supernatural elements. Partly because, while I’m an atheist, I still believe there are more things in the universe and on earth than we yet know. And partly because these elements, whether real or imagined on the part of the character, can act as splendid metaphors – or help to understand a state of mind.
This anthology “blends western grit with the magical and mysterious unknown that waits beyond the next horizon” and includes both a great range of stories and some delightful illustrations. “Abishag Mary” by Frances Rowat brings sea-based imagery deep into the landlocked deserts. “Frank and Earnest” by Tonia Brown features some cracking dialogue, not to mention a villain who seems entirely out of place and mostly baffles the two heroes. Other stories venture beyond the Old West, including "Fifteen Seconds" by Scott Hungerford featuring an alien invasion of a different kind in a more recent West. An excellent collection!
The untamed frontier is a challenge, a test of character, a proving ground for the soul. It's a place where pioneers rewrite their future, or end their days…for better or worse. In the spirit of Bret Maverick, Cat Ballou, Kwai Chang Caine, and James West, The Weird Wild West blends western grit with the magical and mysterious unknown that waits beyond the next horizon.
With thrilling stories by Jonathan Maberry, Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin, John G. Hartness, RS Belcher, Diana Pharaoh Francis, Misty Massey, James R. Tuck, Robert E. Waters, David Sherman, Tonia Brown, Liz Colter, Scott…
Born in Texas, raised in Colorado, I’ve always had one foot in the working cowboy world and the other in the Rocky Mountains. I’m a member of the Western Writers of America, and I’ve summited all 54 fourteen-thousand foot peaks in Colorado. For a number of years, I worked with horses at a therapeutic riding center, as a barn manager. After that, I worked as an equine veterinary assistant, driving around with the vet in a pickup truck to doctor horses. Following that, I pursued the arts. Over the years, I’ve recorded and performed western/folk music (find me on Bandcamp), acted in western films (check my YouTube channel), and written western novels (Sunbury Press/Milford House).
Bob Fudge worked for the famous XIT, a large cattle outfit based in the Texas Panhandle, during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Bob Fudge lived an iconic cowboy life, driving cattle from Texas to Montana. He told his life story in 1932, a year before his death. I first heard about this rare book during a song intro, by western singer Ian Tyson on his Live At Longviewalbum. Before he plays the song “Bob Fudge,” Tyson tells a story of how someone left this book on his guitar case during an earlier performance—and it captivated him. The book captivated me, too, and served as inspiration for my own western novels. Another Canadian western singer, Colter Wall, recorded a live cover version (watch it on YouTube) that is quite cool.
Four years old and homeless, William Walters boarded one of the last American Orphan Trains in 1930 and embarked on an astonishing quest through nine decades of U.S. and world history.
For 75 years, the Orphan Trains had transported 250,000 children from the streets and orphanages of the East Coast…
I have a life-long love of Westerns. I’ve researched the period and the events extensively. One of the first things I look for in any book I read is period accuracy. The books I write are historically accurate, though they are fiction. I’m on a mission, through my writing, to save the Western genre.
While this is a short story, not a novel, it is, in my opinion, the quintessential psychological Western. Depicting the struggle of an ordinary man saddled with extraordinary tasks, to maintain his honor and his values in the face of temptation, it delves into the minds of the two participants, and takes the reader on a wild ride as they wait for the train. Tension you could cut with a knife replaces action, keeping the reader on the edge of his/her seat until the end.
The New York Times-bestselling Grand Master of suspense deftly displays the other side of his genius, with seven classic western tales of destiny and fatal decision . . . and trust as essential to survival as it is hard-earned.
Trust was rare and precious in the wide-open towns that sprung up like weeds on America's frontier—with hustlers and hucksters arriving in droves by horse, coach, wagon, and rail, and gunmen working both sides of the law, all too eager to end a man's life with a well-placed bullet. In these classic tales that span more than five decades—including the first…
