Doc Holliday

By John Myers Myers

Book Overview

"John Myers Myers has written Doc's story with a skill that matches the sureness of a bullet from Doc's gun."-Dallas Times Herald. "As for the general reader, he'll eat this up and beg for more."-San Francisco Chronicle.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803257813
• ISBN13: 9780803257818
• Release Date: August 1973
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

good work

a real effort has been made to separate fact from fiction. This is uncommon where histories tend to be factionalized. A good read.

Auspicious Match of Author and Subject

Doc Holliday is my favorite of all the colorful characters who became legends of the old West, and John Myers Myers is my favorite historian of that great epic of American history. I believe that this book is the best of the many volumes that Myers wrote on the history of the West. Myers brings just the right voice to the story - an idiosyncratic style of telling a tale full of colorful idioms and turns of phrase that perfectly match a history full of people with monikers like Doc, Big Nose Kate, and Curly Bill. Myers was a great folk historian. While he did solid research on his subjects, he realized that the legends that grew up around certain characters had as much historical importance as the facts of their life. Often when writing histories of the West, verifiable facts are few, and legends are plentiful. This was certainly the case when Myers wrote `Doc Holiday'. Yet he was able to use what was known to weave a fascinating tale that rings true. History, after all, is more art form than science, and Myer's "Doc Holiday' should survive more academic efforts that have missed this point in a quixotic quest for "just the facts, ma'am". Doc Holliday, both by the circumstances of his time and place, and apparently by his own design, left a scant official record of his passing among us, but he blazed a wide trail in the legend that he left behind. Myers did a fine job of ferreting out the former, and a masterful job of portraying the later. He captured the spirit of the man and the times and wild place in which he lived and moved. This is a book worthy of the legend, and I recommend it highly. Theo Logos

I read this book twice, that means a lot

The book will probabably be not 100% accurate at all, but it is still a nice try. A pitty Holliday didn't write something himself. A very good book anyhow, a must read for Tombstone-Earp-Holliday-fans !!!

Engaging book by a wonderful stylist

Doc Holliday is one of those characters seen out of the corner of history's eye, about whom all manner of nonsense has been written. This is a lovely little book of engaging discourse by an author whose conversational style is an absolute delight to read. I expect to be sub-specializing in this author just for the pleasure of listening to him write.