New Mexico

Many stories have been written about the exploits of Billy the Kid, the charismatic outlaw of the Old West. Some have been pure fiction, designed to entertain and excite. Purple prose writers began chronicling the exploits of Billy as early as the late 1870s. Others have been biographical, researched by historians or recorded by those who knew him, including his murderer, Sheriff Pat Garrett.

But there was once a different side to the famous gunfighter, a softer more artistic side that seems at odds with Billy's reputation for shooting, killing, and robbing. Born Henry McCarty, he was also known by the names Henry Antrim, Kid Antrim, and William H. Bonney. He didn't shoot twenty-one men, as has been claimed. Four is a more likely number, three in self-defense. In Before Billy the Kid, author Melody Groves explores the early life of the infamous outlaw, the teenage boy who loved to sing and dance. The young man who was polite, educated, and popular. A boy who had the bad luck to be orphaned at fifteen and left with no one to guide him through life. How different history might have been if Billy had pursued his love of music instead of a life of crime.

A central character in legends and histories of the Old West, Billy the Kid rivals such western icons as Jesse James and General George Armstrong Custer for the number of books and movies his brief, violent life inspired. Billy the Kid: A Reader's Guide introduces readers to the most significant of these written and filmed works. Compiled and written by a respected historian of the Old West and author of a masterful new biography of Billy the Kid, this reader's guide includes summaries and evaluations of biographies, histories, novels, and movies, as well as archival sources and research collections.

Surveying newspaper articles, books, pamphlets, essays, and book chapters, Richard W. Etulain traces the shifting views of Billy the Kid from his own era to the present. Etulain's discussion of novels and movies reveals a similar shift, even as it points out both the historical inaccuracies and the literary and cinematic achievements of these works. A brief section on the authentic and supposed photographs of the Kid demonstrates the difficulties specialists and collectors have encountered in locating dependable photographic sources.

This discerning overview will guide readers through the plethora of words and images generated by Billy the Kid's life and legend over more than a century. It will prove invaluable to those interested in the demigods of the Old West--and in the ever-changing cultural landscape in which they appear to us.

The young outlaw known as Billy the Kid spent the winter of 1880-1881 in Santa Fe-trying desperately to get out of its jail.He hired lawyers.He wrote the governor.He even tried digging his way out!Nothing worked.Billy only "escaped" the "safest jail in the Territory" in March 1881, when deputies finally escorted him to the railroad station for a trip to southern New Mexico-where a jury of his peers waited to convict him of murder.But just where was this invincible Santa Fe jail?Today, in Santa Fe, two plaques mark the spot, or rather, two competing spots . . .Lynn Michelsohn tracks down historical sources to identify the long-disputed location of Billy the Kid's Santa Fe jail and to provide this brief glimpse of life in the Wild West on the Southwestern Frontier. (10,000 words; 16 photographs, drawings, and maps)Recommended for Western history buffs, Billy the Kid aficionados, and anyone who loves Santa Fe.

"It's certain to remain the authoritative biography that at last makes the Kid's life whole and understandable."--San Francisco Chronicle

Robert M. Utley does what countless books, movies, television shows, musical compositions, and paintings have failed to do: he successfully strips off the veneer of legendry to expose the reality of Billy the Kid. Using previously untapped sources, he presents an engrossing story--the most complete and accurate ever--of a youthful hoodlum and sometime killer who found his calling in New Mexico's bloody power struggle known as the Lincoln County War. In unmasking the legend Utley also tells us much about our heritage of frontier vigilantism and violence.