Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend

He was a study in contrasts: the legendary gunslinger who made his living as a dentist; the emaciated consumptive whose very name struck fear in the hearts of his enemies; the degenerate gambler and alcoholic whose fierce loyalty to his friends compelled him, more than once, to risk his own life; the sidekick whose near-mythic status has come to rival that of the West's greatest heroes. More than 100 years after he died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-six, Doc Holliday remains an enigma, a legend in the shadows, a brooding metaphor for the moral contradictions of life on the late nineteenth-century frontier.

In Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, the historian Gary Roberts takes aim at the most complex, perplexing, and paradoxical gunfighter of the Old West. Drawing on more than twenty years of research on his enigmatic subject, Roberts discovered numerous new primary sources in his quest to understand both what John Henry Holliday did and didn't do, and what these exploits meant to the elusive man behind the now-legendary deeds.

Roberts explores Holliday's idyllic, antebellum childhood in Georgia, where he was schooled in the manly virtues of independence, loyalty, proficiency with weapons of every kind, and above all, honor. He considers numerous explanations behind John Henry's sudden and drastic decision to abandon his large extended family and a promising career to move to Texas, where, in the parlance of the day, he "slipped from the path of rectitude" even as he clung to his profession and the ideals he had learned as a child. Roberts tracks Holliday's western ramblings from Dallas to Denver to Cheyenne to Dodge City to Tombstone, always in pursuit of the next game of chance and another shot of whiskey, his health on a deep, downward spiral, his gunfighting skills on the rise. Along the way he befriended (or made enemies of) such Western icons as Bat Masterson, Kate Elder, Curly Bill Brocius, and Wyatt Earp.

As you'll discover, there were as many conflicting opinions about Doc Holliday as there were people who knew him, or knew of him: To Earp, he was a "mad, merry scamp with a heart of gold and nerves of steel." According to Masterson, he "had a mean disposition and an ungovernable temper, and under the influence of liquor was a dangerous man." Newspapers called him everything from "a very mild-mannered man . . . genial and companionable" to a "shiftless bagged-legged character—a killer and a professional cut-throat." In this fascinating probe into the real life of a near-mythic figure, you'll meet the man who lived up to every one of these statements and more.

By the time of his death at age 36 in 1887, John Henry "Doc" Holliday was already a Wild West legend: dentist, gunslinger, outcast of a Southern family, "mad, merry scamp with heart of gold and nerves of steel...," per Tombstone friend/sheriff Wyatt Earp. Drawing on newly discovered primary sources, Roberts (emeritus, history, Abraham Baldwin College, Tifton, Georgia) offers insights into the man, the legend, and the frontier period. The biography includes photos of Holliday, his family, friends, and his first cousin Mattie, a rumored early love who became a nun.
Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

By the time of his death at age 36 in 1887, John Henry "Doc" Holliday was already a Wild West legend: dentist, gunslinger, outcast of a Southern family, "mad, merry scamp with heart of gold and nerves of steel...," per Tombstone friend/sheriff Wyatt Earp. Drawing on newly discovered primary sources, Roberts (emeritus, history, Abraham Baldwin College, Tifton, Georgia) offers insights into the man, the legend, and the frontier period. The biography includes photos of Holliday, his family, friends, and his first cousin Mattie, a rumored early love who became a nun. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

--Susan McKey Thomas, cousin of Doc Holliday and coauthor of In Search of the Hollidays

"You can't beat this story for drama. . . . An omnibus of everything ever known, spoken, or written about Doc Holliday."

-Publishers Weekly

"An engagingly written, persuasively argued, solidly documented work of scholarship that will surely take its place in the literature of the Old West."

-Booklist

In Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, the historian Gary Roberts takes aim at the most complex, perplexing, and paradoxical gunfighter of the Old West, drawing on more than twenty years of research-including new primary sources-in his quest to separate the life from the legend. Doc Holliday was a study in contrasts: the legendary gunslinger who made his living as a dentist; the emaciated consumptive whose very name struck fear in the hearts of his enemies; the degenerate gambler and alcoholic whose fierce loyalty to his friends compelled him, more than once, to risk his own life; and the sidekick whose near-mythic status rivals that of the West's greatest heroes. With lively details of Holliday's spirited exploits, his relationships with such Western icons as Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, this book sheds new light on one of the most mysterious figures of frontier history.

He was a dentist from the South believed to have gone west because of tuberculosis, a man who went on to become a gambler, a faro dealer, and one of the most feared (and fearless) gunfighters of his time--a close friend of Wyatt Earp and a key participant in the famous 1881 shootout at the OK Corral. He's been portrayed on screen by actors ranging from Victor Mature and Kirk Douglas to Dennis Quaid and Val Kilmer. But who was the real Doc Holliday? Drawing on 20 years of meticulous, primary-source research, Western historian Gary Roberts strips away the legends and reveals the truth about this enigmatic man, offering many new and surprising discoveries.

GARY L. ROBERTS, Emeritus Professor of History, Abraham Baldwin College, is widely recognized as a historian of the American West and frontier violence. He has published more than seventy-five articles on Western history and coedited a book on Georgia politics, and is the author of Death Comes for the Chief Justice: The Slough-Rynerson Quarrel and Political Violence in New Mexico.

Acknowledgments.

Prologue: The Measure of a Man.

1. Child of the Southern Frontier.

2. The World Turned Upside Down.

3. Gone to Texas.

4. Cow Towns and Pueblos.

5. The Price of a Reputation.

6. Friends and Enemies.

7. The Fremont Street Fiasco.

8. Vengeance.

9. The Out Trail.

10. A Holliday in Denver.

11. A Living—and Dying—Legend.

12. The Anatomy of a Western Legend.

Epilogue: The Measure of a Legend.

Notes.

Index.