hour of need. so those are kind of like inspiration. but i decide to do is write a trio of histories, each based on the smallest turnover and a chance emanates leading a hughes the consequential result, each rated in as possible scenario as i can construct, held huge slick, i might add by the sometimes startling things i discovered that really did happen in matters great and small. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> professor bernard harcourt's, what is the illusory about free markets? >> we have a fantasy in this country that there are such things as free markets. and what i argue in the book is that that is a fantasy and also that it has some negative consequences, some detrimental effects on our political discourse. ..

we turn those small spaces into stand-alone images of a free space of trade. of a free market. all of the regulatory framework that is necessary to create a little space like that as a space of free trade. the illusion really is to think that there can be such a thing as voluntary compensated exchange that can occur without

all of the mechanisms required to put it in place. the chicago board of -- board of trade is a perfect example. and institution we think of the ideals of the space of the free market. and institution constructed through enormous regulatory intervention. in other words a privately chartered organization that could indeed exist in some sense without having criminalize the other bucket shops in chicago. if you hadn't had the criminalization and elimination of all of those other spaces you wouldn't have been able to create that image, that illusion that this is a place of freedom. what i tried to get at in the book is what worked -- what it does for us to create this magical space and ignore all the

regulatory framework around it. and what i suggest has negative consequences. >> host: what are those negative consequences? >> guest: two major negative consequences. one is in some sense it naturalizes the distributions that occur as a result of this. the regulations that -- sometimes we think that distribution in terms of wealth and resources that come out of these exchanges are natural and appropriate and uncriticable. because we don't see there are regulations, wills and practices that have certain tilts in them that distribute resources. we don't see those. then we think the result is

simply unquestionable, the way it should be. and in the sense that good or bad we think that is just the way it is. >> give an example. >> guest: an example for instance, any kind of regulation, regulation of an investment bank as to whether or not you can have a 3-1 debt equity ratio or 30-1 debt equity ratio. those will have consequences. who is going to be picking up the slack if there are bankruptcies for instance. that will have consequences. all of the regulatory pieces. in a situation like the chicago board of trade there are requirements of inventory being in the city of chicago. that will have consequences on long distance versus closer to the city producers.

when you standardized contracts, you are creating a standard that is good for some people and not others but once that regulatory framework is hidden from you we don't see it anymore. for instance, very simple thing. a standardized grain contract that gets traded on the chicago board of trade, did you see different kinds of wheat you can trade in. there would have been a time before a standardized contract like that that sum would gain reputation for having better wheat than others and that would require a lot of work. effect that we have standardized grain contracts that allow in a sense anymore for reputation malaysian for an investment rel those relations it gives you -- all of these 9 huge regulations

we don't think have effects have distributional effects. it is when we don't see those that the distributions then become natural and unquestionable. the second effect is also very troubling and has to do with the fact that we then tend to allow the state to do certain things that they seem to be more confident at. that of course tends to be punishing and policing. we developed this kind of differential treatment of the confidence of the state. the state is incompetent when it comes to regulating the economy. but it is legitimate when it comes to policing and putting people in prison. to a certain extent the more we

believe in the incompetence of the state in regulatory matters, legitimacy of the stake in law and order matters the easier it is to allow what we have seen over the course of the past week for decades which has been an exponential increase in the number of persons in prison, basically we passed from a situation at the beginning of the 1970s when we would incarcerate 150 per 100,000 persons to a rate where we are at 1% of the population behind bars. it is an increase of seven times. it is exponentially few look at a curve. what made that possible is the fact that we have this background, often unconscious, you also hear it, ideas that the

state is not good at regulating the economy. if they were to take over -- when they do things like railroad, when they run amtrak you know the train will be late and it will be incompetent etc. but for some reason we allow them, we allow the state to fully regulate the penal sphere to create a huge prison apparatus. so it is that contrast between those two which have to do with basic assumptions we have about what the state is good at and what the state isn't do that and this illusion in part that there is some orderly ness in the economic realm. there is this invisible hand in the economic realm. there is this freedom in the economic realm that you should be touching. >> host: what is the image on the front of your book? >> guest: the badge on the front of the book is this hand that is

mysteriously holding up a leaf. essentially it is the idea of the magical ideas that we could create this orderliness, we could create this space without touching it. and that is of course the image of an orderly market, and orderly space. we don't really have to touch it. it happens on its own. and so we don't put our fingers in it. we don't have to hold on to it. it is just there. >> host: you teach at the law school, political science department at the university of chicago. what do you teach? >> guest: i have these varied interests as you can tell, in part theoretical and political economic, in political science i teach political theory and

courses on contemporary political thought predominantly. and have a background in continental pherae. i teach that the political science department. i am sharing it now. and administrative tasks, hiring in faculty. i also teach at the law school in criminal law and procedure area. so i teach courses on punishment and social theory on sentencing and criminal procedure as well. >> host: is this book -- you have blurbs from cornell west and malcolm bread well on the back. is this written for students or layman? >> guest: i tried to write it for the reader of the new york times. or the new york review.

someone who has theoretical interest. and therefore wants to put their hand into the material, keitel materials and historical materials. i tried to not address only my colleagues. i tried not to address only my colleagues. i tried to make it in some sense in conversation with an educated public. >> host: if someone said the fine capitalism how would you define it? >> guest: the definition of capitalism would be an economic system that depends primarily on private property ownership.

and puts in place structures of economic organization that respect private property ownership as a mode of production. that would be how i would define it. in contrast say to other economic systems such as socialism, where the industry -- and industry may be fully nationalized. of course, those are easy definitions and things get much more complicated in reality. as you know as a result of the 2008 great recession or depression, however you want to turn it, we the united states actually nationalize in part the biggest things. pretty soon after 2008 the united states -- the people of

the united states became the greatest shareholders in citibank and bank of america. in most countries that would be considered nationalization. in the united states, we don't call it nationalization. in part, in part because some of the figments of the imagination that are associated with this illusion of the free market. that is a very interesting episode in american history. under president bush, under republican president, with a treasury department headed by hank paulson who was one of the leading investment bankers of this country. under the leading private investment banker of this

country, we nationalize our biggest banks but we didn't call it that. paul krugman had the term that became the most interesting term. it was pre privatization. we were pre privatizing the banks in the sense that the government was coming in and bailing them out, buying equity basically with the expectation of allowing them to return to entire private ownership once the financial collapse -- that we recovered from the financial collapse. i like your question because to a certain extent it really puts the figure on some sense on this problem of how we define these systems. could you say that in 2009 when we nationalized the biggest banks in the country or when it

was clear that the only way that this country could survive was through government bailout, through the fact that the government was prepared to and did nationalize gm and did partially nationalized the biggest bank, that the federal government was there to catch this economy as it was kind of collapsing. would you call that socialism? >> host: that was just a little bit from bernard harcourt, "the illusion of free markets: punishment and the myth of natural order". published by harvard. thank you very much. >> guest: very welcome. >> next on booktv, a history of the gunfight at the o.k. corral which occurred on october 26, 1881, in tombstone, arizona.

this is about 40 minutes. >> good evening and welcome to the arizona historical society. i am the director of publication and editor of the journal of natural history and we are here to welcome jeff gwynn, author of the last gunfight:the real story of the shoot out at the o.k. corral and how it changed the american west. he is the author of the recent best seller go down together. the untold story of bonnie and clyde. i would like to start the conversation this evening with the question i am sure is on everyone's mind in this room. there are basically three iconic events in the history of the west of the imagination. one is custer's last stand and

the other is the alamo and certainly the third is the gunfight at the o.k. corral. the question is why? >> there are obvious reasons we need another book on the gunfight at the o.k. corral. books written by critics who don't consider themselves expert in the subject of tombstone or the gun fight for the american frontier. all the claiming that it is a book of revisionist history by which they mean it is shocking to them that these things in the book are not actually effect. one reviewer said he was stunned to learn that the battle didn't actually occur in the o.k. corral but in a vacant lot some yards away. i think we can thank bill breckinridge and stuart lake and

some others for that. trying to write later about the gunfight at the vacant lot near but not at the o.k. corral doesn't have the same ring throughout history. people also seem to be astonished that instead of talking about cardboard cutout participants we are talking about real human being, men of their time to have good qualities and some flaws. everyone seems staggered by the fact that tombstone might have been something other than a dusty little desert hamlet. the fact that there are so many intelligent readers who would certainly say truthfully they care a great deal about history don't know these very basic thing and let alone the complexities of the place and the time. that is why we need another book about tombstone and the o.k. corral. >> i would like to sit back on your dusty little town, and.

i lived in arizona 35 years and spent a lot of time in tombstone. i had the pleasure of reading your book in manuscript and reading the book published this week and it struck me as are was reading it that it is difficult for any of us who no tombstone today to imagine it in 1881. such an important part of the context of what happened on october 26, 1881. it would be helpful if you could tell us what kind of town it was back then. >> i will in tibet if i asked this audience who they thought my favorite character in my tombstone and o.k. corral cast was they might not guess it was the town of tombstone itself. it was such a vibrant place. sophisticated not just in terms of a mining boom town but in terms of towns all around the country. it had shops that sold the kind

of stanchions you would see on the streets of san francisco and the people bought them. gourmet restaurants where for a few dollars you could have a meal that would rival anything you might even in new york city. theaters offering world-class entertainment. even a few telephones linking the mines to the mine exchange buildings. the town fathers were about to start debating putting in a sewer line on the main street of town. this is a place that simply is not given its proper credit in a lot of the film's and essays and so forth today. it was much more than given credit for just like the history of southeast arizona and the history of the american frontier is much greater than most people realize. >> the other important part of the backdrop of this story is

politics. where arizona -- today's politics, very complex and we sometimes think that border issues are insoluble and yet when you read your book i think you will discover the border issues go back as far as we can imagine and our politics today don't have anything on what they were in 1881. if you could give us an idea of the setting that the clantons and earps lived in that would help. >> the border issues were very real, extended and intense. it was certainly felt the trading between americans and mexicans was something you would want but bandits on both side of the border trade on merchants. there was some cattle rustling being done. a lot of people tend to think it

was 1-sided. that the cowboys faction which was running into mexico and raid indiscriminately, but the fact remains there were mexican bandits who came north over the rio grande. it is fair to say that someone from the texas ranger museum in waco, is a wonderful place with a lot of great history. and if you read the reports about the rustler's the texas rangers were trying to drive out of texas they were not driving them out because they receive up -- stealing mexican cattle. there was a great deal of discrimination against mexicans in texas and in the southwest. it was not considered much of a crime to go down and take their stock. politically the earps represented the republicans. the big business men of tombstone and the area who wanted law and order to be

firmly in place. this because they thought that was the best way to attract outside investors. at the same time a lot of small ranchers who were not just represented by the clantons and mcclowerys who migrated west because of reconstruction offended them so much, wanting to get away from what they considered government oppression, to be free to live their own lives as they chose. we simply switch to political parties around today you can see that the themes remain with us as well as the ethnic prejudices. >> it may seem strange on the face of it but in reading this book something struck me that also struck me in reading your bonnie and clyde book not just about people which is. which makes it really fascinating reading. but family values play a big role and relationships play a

big role in what occurs, and i wonder if you could draw out the relationships that occurred -- what the family man in this story. people sometimes forget the gun fight involved three sets of brothers. and what that added to the mix. >> when you are out in the frontier, when you were prospecting, when you were trying to run a business or ranch, everybody else in the area to a certain extent was a competitor. it was hard to know who you could trust, who wouldn't be trey you and for that reason family was so important. it was so critical. the earp brothers were desperately loyal to each other. insult to one was an attack from all of them. that was also true of the

clantons and the mcclowerys. you trusted your family, you defended your family. sometimes you might be a little too pro and to defend them. these were the kinds of relationships that were important out there. in a place where you are struggling to create yourself. in the great words of fred bowlen, that's fine historian, the frontier of the west was a place where men could still dream of becoming. and part of that dream was having your family there with you. right or wrong, to be at your side and always trusted. >> the relationships in here that almost deified believe because the two are so polar opposites and yet probably agree that the fight wouldn't have occurred if this relationship did exist is between wyatt earp and doc holliday.

how do you explain that connection? >> speaking for everybody in the room who is a writer and/or researcher which means speaking for everybody in the room pretty much, we all kind of live for those thank you jesus moments, when you think this explains it. this helps me understand it. one thing that puzzles me when i started writing this book is how is it that wyatt earp and doc holliday were friends when they absolutely should be? wyatt is trying to move up in the world by impressing social superiors that he is a straight laced man who firmly believes in law-and-order, and doc was a walking time bomb. all we know is there were a couple general references in different riding that wyatt said at some point probably in dodge city that doc holliday did

something to save his life. there is some new material in this book of mine, often gathered -- rather than brilliant. no more so in evidence than in meeting a collector of memorabilia than mark ragsdale who lives in massachusetts. mark had in his possession the original notes taken by engineer john flood when he was interviewing wyatt in one of his earlier attempts at a memoir. these notes are fabulous for any number of reasons. if for nothing else than match up with flood is writing in these nose against what stuart lake wood writes some years later. you can see that wyatt is learning as he goes along the way to present certain things that have great impact.

but flood took copious notes on wyatt earp's explanation of how he became friends with doc holliday and we were able to actually put that in the book. according to wyatt, he was in dodge one day. doc holliday who was an acquaintance but not yet a warm friend is gambling along main street where wyatt intercepts syntaxes who were in town and celebrating a little bit too hard and the texans the chairman they are not going to be arrested and instead turn on earp. doc holliday is sitting in a saloon playing cards across the street and see this through a window and interrupt the game, borrow the gun and rushes on to the sidewalk, catches the cowboys by surprise and hold them at gunpoint while wyatt can collect himself and make the arrest and wyatt told john flood

from that moment i became the true and lifelong friend of doc holliday. say what you will about either of these men. people have a lot to say. they were faithful friends to each other and stuck with each other in times and in circumstances where others would not have done that and i think that is a great attribute in anybody and speaks well of virgil -- wyatt earp and doc holliday. >> another fascinating character of many. it came to me when i came to this job -- the great folklorist and grassroots showed me a letter he received in the 1930s when he was working on billy king's tombstone. word got out that it was a biography of wyatt earp and he received a letter from josephine saying that stuart lake had done a perfectly adequate job and she chose no further book be written

about her husband. little did she suspect. how does josephine fit into this mix? >> the most fascinating thing about josephine is she was such a world class finaglers that it is hard to know if anything she said was true or not. that is why she is so much fun. i think we could say in modern terms that this was a woman who required high maintenance. she was determined to control her husband's image and she was willing to do whatever she had to to make that happen. there is a manuscript, product of two young men relatives trying to pride enough good stuff out of josephine that they can get a book published, that

parts of it have been passed around in the earp tombs the research community. the or originals are unsafe because of box controlled by the fort county historical society in dodge city, kansas. i have gone up there and with the permission of the man who made the donation, glenn boyer, i studied those manuscript's, and came away absolutely certain that josephine was just full of it. [laughter] much of what you see in my book is gathered from other public records and documents. if it says they make many of her statements look questionable, if josephine were here right now she would be sobbing and throwing herself on your mercy to be protected by some evil

outsider like me that only wants to make wyatt look bad. and josephine looked bad. when it comes to the fact josephine didn't need anybody's held making herself look bad. i will say a wonderful writer named and kirschner is working on a biography of josephine marcus earp and she's braver than i am. i have faith in her and when her book comes out i hope you will snap it up as i will and find some wonderful things and we will learn a lot. >> one of the great beauties of your book is unfolding the gun fight. step-by-step fashion. in a way that seems both inevitable and a total accident that makes sense. when you get to the final moment virgil earp has the same moment

i imagine custer had when he got on top of the ridge and saw what looked like all these indians in the world down there or travis had when he realized no one was coming to save them at the alamo. if virgil says i don't mean that what does it tell us about how this event happened? >> i will repeat that something was bound to happen. whether it was going to involve these specific individuals or others there was too much tension and too much mistrust. james earp said later that he felt there was a certain amount of pressure put on virgil by the townspeople, none of this would have occurred. i like virgil lot and i ended up feeling sorry for him. i think he tried hard to be a good lawmen. in the eyes of average americans

the gunfight at the o.k. corral involved wyatt earp, doc holliday and the clantons. it seems to me virgil and morgan earp have been bumped into the background. virgil wanted to be a good lawmen. he was pragmatic about how he enforced the law. he preferred giving people a chance to back away without embarrassing them or having their pride attacked. he did his best that day to led the cowboys settled down and ride on out of town and found himself hoarse stacked. when he did he called on the people he trusted most, is two brothers and then there was doc holliday along who would never miss an occasion like this. it was a terrible tragedy that this happened and i think if things had happened differently in one or two instances, if

virgil hadn't been approached by a couple tell leaders offering vigilantes', if wyatt earp and tom mcclowery hadn't had an altercation. if the cowboys walking through the o.k. corral really meaning to leave town but not wanting to leave too fast because they didn't want the onlookers to think the earps had backed them down and made them leave, any of this might have been prevented. if not then something similar would have happened sometime soon. >> you might assume after the gunfight the earps had done what the town wanted them to do and they could have walked away heroes. that didn't happen. what does that tell us about tombstone? >> virgil's crap moment was when he said i don't mean that, the earps collective moment came when instead of the wrecked -- recognized as heroes you have

2,000 mourners turned out for the billy clanton and mcclowery brothers funeral procession. the tombstone leaders and lynn bailey leans forward on this, wonderful thing about historians like lynn is they don't think it is wrong to have a different opinion looking at the same set of fact. the open mindedness that encourages discussion rather than argument. i have learned so much from him. we all have. what i thought our was talking about -- it has been a long day. the town fathers did not consider the earps there =. they were useful. they were tools that could do certain functional things and after the gunfight and public opinion began to sway, sometimes looking like it was going against the earps the town leaders think we have a bunch of

voters here who may not like the way this turned out and are not supporting the earps as much. the earps were disposable like disposable razors and they came to resent that when they realized it. >> i want to quote this out of your book. you said wyatt realized he was limited to uncomfortable memories of a minor functionary who ultimately overstepped himself in a particularly violent regrettable ways. how do we get from that to o'brien? >> the way history is remembered quite often is the way the general public decides it wants it to have been. at the turn of the 20th century there's a great american interest, intensified american interest in frontier heroes. you have teddy roosevelt writing popular books about how great it is to be wrenching out in the west, the surge in life style.

you have bat masterson reinventing himself as a journalist in the east and writing magazine articles about the great heroes that he rode with including wyatt earp. the silent movies, cowboy drama that are presented as we get into the depression. it is a complicated scary time. we want to think not long ago in our history things were simpler. where air -- if this was evil good got out its guns and eradicated. from there we get the talkies, the movies of the 40s and 50s. for some of those who are old enough to remember do you remember on every second tv show was a black and white cowboy drama? i wanted to be the lone ranger. it was simply an evolution of what we wanted to believe happened. wyatt earp first is presented by bat masterson, then stuart

lake's book and then the movies. for a while tombstone was more popular in the movies than wyatt earp. josephine is doing everything she can, threatening lawsuits, don't sell wyatt earp's image. her idea was selling the image, the scene where he tried to duck behind something when someone was shooting at him. to josephine wyatt would never have ducked. it grew because it was what so many people wanted to believe and the sad thing is the truth, the way he really was, not as a saint, not as a career criminal, not the best of the western lawman, not every bit as bad as the cowboys, when we realized someone is an actual human being and not a cardboard cutout, when

that person becomes real, then the history becomes real. don't all of us here, each in our own way, think it is important to use the facts rather than the fiction? because the facts when they are presented with enthusiasm, with context, almost inevitably are better than the myth. >> you can't get away saying something changed the american west particularly when it is a 30 seconds gunfight without explaining what you mean. i have to call you on the subtitle. >> call me what? >> i always wanted to say that. i've got to call you on that. >> i think what happened at the o.k. corral had two specific changes. one short-term and one less dramatic than the other. again it is in surprise that so many readers and reviewers --

after the gunfight the earps and doc holliday are put into a hearing to determine whether they should be tried for murder. wyatt and doc holliday and their companions are indicated for murder. this is a message that in the american west, lawmen have to answer in court for their actions if they were not legal. that men claiming to avenge attacks can't take the law into their own hands and the greater way it changed was the perception of the american west. today we don't go a week without some politician who has won a close election or a football coach saying it was just like

being in the o.k. corral. it has become part of our national vocabulary. and people use it to demonstrate that west -- that the frontier was a simple black and white place. it wasn't. history is so rich, so complex, so multi dimensional, it is given short shrift. i think the more we write books -- mine isn't the only one. it wasn't the first and won't be the last -- tries to give context and help readers understand thing that really happened. the benefit is greater understanding. what is the sense of writing a book or reading one if you are not learning something? i learned so much writing this book. i hope some readers when they

read it will want to know more and turn to the work of others. if that happens, i would say it was something that contributed to a change that needed to come. i think many of us in this room realized on this particular topic, research can be a full context -- contact sport. it is surprising for you to say we ought to be a family of historians. what do you mean by that? >> i don't think families always get along. but i do think we have to realize that it is not so much that we compete with each other. in the best sense we ought to be complimenting each other. "the last gunfight" is a book with my name on it. i hope i wrote it well. i spent a couple years of full-time research going all over the country trying to find

new things, to ferret things out and bring new conclusions and concepts, that none of us read books like this without standing on the shoulders, without standing alongside of other people who had been doing a great and honorable and often unrecognized work. and yet without these people, people like me don't write our books at all. i think it is only appropriate particularly with some of the folks in this room to speak to that as a way to close down this part of our program because i am sitting up here but i am also sitting beside so many people. when you talk about those who unselfishly research, devote themselves to trying to learn things that help the rest of us understand better and there are folks in this room, there is tom

gomer who keeps saying keep laughing but he also keeps sharing his research. scott blake led me on a wonderful walk through the desert where i accidentally sat on some barbwire. when i think of scott our think of him with gratitude for his contribution to my book and some of the puncture marks in my butt. bob conquest, the only man who could help me understand some of the intricacies of frontier law. jim turner who helped me tracked down an army lieutenant and never asked why it mattered. because once he started looking he got interested himself. the thrill of the chase. lynn bailey. who knows more about the history of this area than lynn bailey? all his work gives so much to

us. kevin malkin, owners of one of the greatest collections of western memorabilia in this country and who shared an selfishly with anybody who asked. there are people here tonight who are in our books, gary roberts. i am writing this book i met gary and he makes a thank you jesus discovery. and 0 regional newspaper article showing that after wyatt earp was arrested for horse theft in his youth he didn't just walk away on bail, but he broke out of jail and was technically a felon for the rest of his life. gary called me up and said i know you are writing this book and i think this is interesting. let me send you this article. use it in your book. think about that kind of

generosity. paul cool, mark borden, and call your do when i met her being a shy timid young lady her first remark is if we are doing all the work why do you write the book? and you think you ask tough questions, buddy. paul hutton, a great lady in texas and knows more about frontier women than anybody i have ever seen. bob mc, that. he charged me for using a picture of doc holliday but i am still grateful to bob. jeff morgan, a man so generous with his knowledge and doesn't get half the credit he deserves. fred bowlen. dan raywood who said the first time i've met him i will tell you everything you need to know and proceeded to tell me about the wonderful sale on all the books he had written and i could

have his stack for $100 for today only. he was still grinning when he pocketed my check. ray manzthea who ferreted out who owned what and what the taxes were. bob alexander. johnny behan has a defender for life and bob is an example how you can disagree with someone and do it pleasantly. jim donovan, who is doing a wonderful book about the battle of the alamo. other authors. casey tfortiller and a special manner still -- i am grateful to him because i read his book, bill michelle ngburg. two people all of us should recognize for their contributions to our knowledge even though there is controversy involving them. maybe deservedly but for tonight

let's just credit them for the things they have given us. carl chafing and glenn boyer. some of the people who contribute most are those who don't necessarily do the research themselves but they do the things that make it possible for the rest of us. when i met bruce i wanted him to read my manuscript because i knew he would give me a fair and objective opinion what i was doing well and what i needed to do better and there's a special woman named christine roads and under her direction, the recorder's office, place where anybody ought to start doing this research. i learned from all these folks as a gesture towards that, i am contributing all my research material, all my notes, interview transcripts, document copies, everything that went into the last -- "the last

gunfight" to the arizona historical society so that the next person who wants to write a book on this topic has immediate access to everything i had. [applause] here's what i would like you to applaud. i am making this contribution in honor of bruce dingus and christine roads. [applause] >> kind of limited. >> obviously one more. the last unsung hero great friend of readers everywhere and great friend of writers too. bob hughes. [applause] the conclusion. i didn't write a book without everybody else's help. let us all work together and when we do that i think everybody benefits. most of all the people who need

to know the things that we believe is so important. thank you. >> a nice place to wrap it up. we have a little time for questions. what i ask you to do is come up to the microphone. i will pass this out. please keep your questions brief and to the point so everyone has a chance. >> you first. >> two. >> didn't alley earp said wyatt earp was robbing stages instead of keeping law and order and who killed johnny ringo? >> who planted this woman? answer to the first one. there's a great deal of question whether allie earp said many of the things that frank waters reported that she said.

i think probably there were tensions between alley and wyatt. did waters exaggerate those tensions? i think that is a fact. because i frankly don't trust what waters road. i can't rely on that. who killed johnny ringo? somebody. maybe even johnny ringo himself. a little mystery in history is okay. >> on the subject of josephine marcus i was intrigued by your referring to wyatt earp as her husband. was my impression that there's no evidence there was every legal marriage between wyatt and josephine. can you speak to that? >> certainly. a lot of marriages on the frontier were the common law variety where there was no legal ceremony and where frankly all the power lay with the man rather than the woman.

when somebody got tired of it it was dissolved. there was no legal basis for it. wyatt earp i believe was married once to aurelia in his youth. between her and josephine two other common law wives for a second period. when i say he is her husband i use that in the accepted sense of the frontier where a couple would enter a common law relationship. you are certainly correct that i don't believe there with a legal union. you, stranger. >> you look familiar. do you have a favorite movie about the gunfight and can you comment on some of the strengths and weaknesses in the various movies, more recent and older? >> my favorite o.k. corral film is the star trek episode! still loved that one! all the films that have been

made and been popular have some entertainment value. more recently the film tombstone tried to stick closer to the facts than the wyatt earp film but that is just a personal feeling. as to whether there has been a film that really stuck to the facts and tried to show this was more interesting and entertaining than the methodology i can't name one yet but i can think of a great candidate somewhere down the road. >> you mentioned the politics were quite extensive in tombstone at that time. does that extend to the newspapers and which ones were they? >> thank you for that question which we can answer without anyone arguing about it. it was democrat and the epitaph was republican. the political tensions were carried out in print and contributed a great deal to the hostile atmosphere between the two political parties. i will say a lot of people

thought that was the way politics was supposed to be played, then and now. of course you tried to use innuendo and slurs. why wouldn't you if they worked? one more. then we will close up. >> congratulations on an excellent book. after all your research, auld this delving into everything i want to know what you think of wyatt earp? another author has he shaded and underworld all his life. after all your research what do you think of the die? >> i think wyatt earp was a man of his time. in those times, young men trying to make a living, trying to establish themselves operated on both sides of the law. i don't think he was a st.. i don't think he was evil.

i think he was like all of us a flawed human being who made some good decisions and plenty of bad ones. i did not in any way find myself disliking him. i don't find myself wanting to put a pin of him on my wall. i will tell you this. he was a damn interesting man. >> thank you all. i know jeff is exhausted but he will be glad to sign books over at that table. books available for purchase over there. also this doesn't come up very often. we have a collection of earp memorabilia. pistol, bible, badge, wedding ring on display. they will go back in the fall after this. take time because you won't see again. take time to look at that. you have a real treat in store when you read this book.

>> thanks for coming, everybody. [applause] >> that was jeff gwynn in any event posted by the arizona history museum in tucson. for more information visit arizonahistoricalsociety.org. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> i have a long list of books but some are unfinished and some are new. the first book i am working on is montezuma by robert kaplan about the whole issue of central asia where i think most of the politics of the next 25 years ago into a curve. i have read chapters of it when i travel to various parts of indonesia but i want to read the whole book. i started in february.

another book was given to me by a fellow in my office from the american academy of mechanical engineers who worked with me on the question of water. i said to him and tell me what problems with water are going to be over the next 20 or 30 years and this book he gave me and said i want you to read it. i was never able to write a perfect report but a good book to read about the question of water. is an issue that we do need to think about in the future. george friedman wrote a book called the next hundred years which is a fascinating book that looks out 100 years at who our major allies will be, most countries we are involved with or have trouble with and so when he came out with this next book called the next decade, maybe i'd better get that one red and see what will happen from the perspective of people who look

at trends. one of the most fascinating things in his first book is countries will be involved with will be turkey and poland. i never thought about that. are thought about turkey but never poland. then he said we will have a war within the next hundred years with mexico. a whole lot of things in that book fascinating. i decided i am going to read the second book which is more down to earth. has congressman everybody who writes a book sends one to the office and says you ought to read this book. we get all kinds of books many of which i put in my office but i also get people who recommend books to me and say you should read this book to friends and so forth. one was sent to me