Condition: Good: Good condition for a used book! Some wear. Text illustrated with more than 400 b/w. photographs and illustrations, bound in original quarter cloth with papered boards, title lettered in gilt on spine. No dust jacket. See images for the condition of this book.
Blurb: They were the men and women, from both sides of the law, who used guns to blaze their way into the history books and American folklore. They were the gunfighters, a collection of whom is here presented in an exciting potpourri of periods and settings. Whether you are a historian, gun aficionado, or are just interested in fact that reads like fiction, Guns and the Gunfighters will fascinate you. Witness the murder of James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, shot in the back while playing poker in a Deadwood, South Dakota, saloon, holding "the dead man's hand" of aces and eights. Follow Special Investigator Frank Hammer on the trail of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, ending with their bloody demise on a logging road in Louisiana. More than thirty individuals are covered, with hundreds of illustrations. Some of those included are John Dillinger, "Public Enemy Number 1," and Belle Starr, "Queen of the Bandits," along with personalities not normally thought of as gunfighters--Sergeant Alvin York, who captured 132 German soldiers during World War I, and Winston Churchill, a veteran and prisoner during the Boer War who successfully escaped. For the gun collector, Guns and the Gunfighters is a valuable reference source. A wide range of guns from various periods are examined in detail in seventeen sections placed following the biographies of the persons who used these weapons.
Guns profiled in the Dillinger arsenal, for example, are the Ortgies Auto Pistol and the Colt Army Special DA Revolver. Such profiles include history of manufacture and use, advantages of the weapon, specifications, and results of functional tests conducted by experts. Many of the legends of the gunfighters, examples of America's often violent and lawless history, have been inaccurate and incomplete. Guns and the Gunfighters presents accurate accounts, proving that the true story is often more exciting than the myth.