thank you for coming out tonight. [inaudible conversations] you are watching booktv on bookn c-span2. television for serious readers. freedom fest libertarian conference in las vegas talking with authors and now joining us is the former "new york times" reporter whose most recent book is wild bill the true story of the american frontiers first gunfighter. what do we know about wild bill and what should we know?

>> not much into that is one of the motivations for doing the buck. it's all in the name. there hasn't been a biography since the 1960s. there's been a lot of scholarships since then. most of what we know is a rumor, fabrication. he was a famous outlaw. he was the most dynamic that's true to some extent but he also spent a lot of time. he was a great gun man he cannot shoot anybody, that's true. he died because somebody shot him in the back. there's so much we don't know. he was a civil war fire he spent two years of the civil war behind confederate lines. we have the rumor or the story that the love of his life was calamity jane. the movie with jeanne cooper and

jean arthur. that isn't true is the only adversary of the united states speak to al[inaudible] all these things we don't know about wild bill that we are aree coke waiting to be unearthed and it turned out the real story in my opinion is as interesting or more interesting than anything made up about him. >> host: was he known contemporarily? >> guest: the first civil war you could make the argument he was the first civil war western celebrity. the reason for that is he already had sort of a resume built-up by then. the new york monthly magazine sent out a reporter to him and did an article about him and it was enormous. thousands and thousands of people write about it and there was this image of him as the iconic original lone gunmen of

the american western frontier. to a large extent that's true. some things the reporter made up. that never happens, right? but a lot of the stories were true and suddenly everybody had this image of his iconic archetype of the individual, the gun man, the independent source that could make him comfortable wherever he was. a lot of that was true and people found out about it while he was still a young man. >> host: what does a gun man do for a living? >> guest: tries to stay alive. the case of wild bill, he was the winner of what is believed to be the first recorded gunfight in the american west. after that point, if there was a gunpoint at a civil argument they were called a dual. it was alexander hamilton and in 1865 in missouri, he squared off against david and they actually approached each other and you could see which one was still

standing. >> host: in front of an audience? >> guest: in front of an audience. >> host: who paid for? >> guest: it was in town square. he said i will be there at 6:00 and i will walk around to paradg you. he warned him don't do that. he's actually calling him out. what happened, the townsfolk's stopped what they were doing and watched this display take place. when he emerged victorious the word spread like a prairie fire. it was more calculated than anybody they had ever seen before. so, he became the american frontier gunmen and others came along to rival him, but he was the undisputed heavyweight champion of gun fighting until he died. >> host: how did he make his money and survive? >> guest: mostly as a gambler. one of the things i found fascinating working on the book

is that for an individual with a form of transportation at the time, he got around a lot. he was in kansas, missouri, nebraska, the dakotas, arizona, new mexico, texas. he would gamble an and that is w he made his money. he wasn't awol man -- wall man. he was tracked down people but had stolen u.s. mail and things like that. one time he made it as a broadway actor. his friend buffalo bill came to him when he was out of a job and said i just wrote this play if it's for you and me and a couple of other people and we are going to basically just do this play sitting around a campfire on stage talking about it and reenacting some of our adventures. he thought this was the silliest thing he had ever heard.

when they offered him $100 a week, he took it. he opened a play in new york and it was a huge hit around the block to get in and month after month we never saw money like this before but he was increasingly uncomfortable. he thought it was a silly way to make a living. he finally had enough, shot the lights off, walked out of the theater and took the next train back. >> host: how did he and the buffalo bill become friendbuffat who was buffalo bill? >> guest: when they first met, cody had recently lost his father and was working trying to make money to support his sister is working on a wagon train and one of the drivers was bill hill hill. cody was only 12 at the time into the bullied that went to beat him up. he took care of the bullying from that point on, he looked up to wild bill and they became friends. during the civil war silcox was

a scout and spy after the war they would guide wagon trains and they stayed that way. they played together. he became almost part, he didn't have a family of his own. he would be embraced by the cody family. so that remains the case until he died. >> host: is he ever heard of buffalo bill's wild west show? >> guest: no com, he didn't live long enough for that. he died in august 1876 in deadwood south dakota. she was gunned down from behind during a poker game and that was 1876. buffalo bill didn't really get going on his show until the 80s when i started being successful. i have no doubt that if he were alive he would have been invited to participate. >> host: what is deadwood south dakota, why was it a place

in 1876 in what was it like? >> guest: the biggest reason is because gold had been discovered in the black hills. an expedition in 1874 but by george custer found gold in the black hills, and at that time the black hills was sacred land protected by government treaty. i have to say the administration tried very hard to keep people out for a while. then everybody was rushing into the black hills and what happens in most town with gold and silver and tombstones, suddenly the towns ran up because they have to have places where hotels, saloon, places where the banks are going to set up shops so they can buy things for the miners, that is how it arose that sprang up almost overnight. rough and tumble place. he was fine. he kind of enjoyed it because it was a place people were suddenly

getting rich and he was happy to take their money. he would have stayed there indefinitely if things turned out differently. >> host: where was his wife at the time? >> guest: they had gotten married in wyoming just a couple two or three months earlier and then they'd come back to cincinnati where she had family. they had a honeymoon in cincinnati, he said i'm going to go back and make a lot of money and then we will retire and come back and that was the plan. unfortunately, jack interrupted the plan. it's kind of sad because they have loved each other for years anyearsuntil they circled each r because they have different lifestyles and finally decided they were not any younger, they got married and then it was at that unfortunate moment when they were about to have their lives together, he was killed. >> host: a couple other famous names coming to your book. calamity jane, george custer.

>> guest: frank and jesse james had a couple of encounters with wild bill. john wesley had a famous encounter when he was the marshall of abilene. it was remarkable to me that because he roamed around so much he kept encountering these people. you think how much are you going to cross paths with people that he was always on the move and said he's encountering these people sometimes again and again. >> host: how much did the original harper's article, and just his exploits contribute to how we thought of the west? >> guest: it did and i should mention something else, the same time that the article came out, the tribune i think it was the herald tribune they published an article because they heard harper's had a scoop and he did. they tracked him down and they spent a few days together and he was telling him about his

adventures. right after the article was published, the tribune article was published and that also created a lot of attention. henri stanley wanted to go back and do a sequel for this i want to send you to africa to look for a missing doctor named livingston. so he ended up getting famous for finding doctor livingstone. but that contributed a lot to our view of the west because we've always sought as a place at the frontier. but it wasn't quite as lewis as people thought it was. there were marshals and deputies and sheriffs. the west kept moving west to try to make the civilization he was both a gunfighter and also a law man. we start to see their was no expanding but making an attempt to join the rest of american

civilization. he became a hero. they both would read these novels just like with silcox growing up and he would be the there. >> host: this is your second book on the west. west. you are a veteran on the east coast. >> guest: this one wasn't necessarily intended. i had done a book that came out a couple of years ago and it was just a fun story. it was supposed to be a one-off. why was this important? >> guest: it was the biggest cattle on the frontier. coming up from texas they could take it away and they get paid off and also took the city for the wicked out of the midwest that was the reputation that it

had. i thought it would just be a fun book and i have a different book i was working on. then the first week it was the times best-seller list. i get back from the tour and i had lunch with my editor and he said you know that you're working on right now, forget about it. is there another figure you can think of it was the first thing that popped into my mind. he said what do you know about wild bill and i said other than his name i don't know anything about him. he's played by a couple supporting actors in movies here and there that he's played by charles rauf? that's what happened. i said let me see if there is a story there or there ended in is was more than anticipated. >> host: what did you think of the portrayal of deadwood i think it was on hbo or showtime.

>> guest: i really enjoyed the portrayal even though he was twice the age at the time. i thought it was really good and then when he died it was in this episode i kind of lost interest. many people i know loved the series. i can't say anything about it i just didn't feel the same after he died. this was years before he started working on the book. it's almost like something inside one day you will have the chance to tell the story. >> host: how do you research a story like this? >> guest: at the end of the day you are left with a gold nugget or two. the whole calamity jane romance. the bill was a stone cold

killer, he never was back. you read everything possible on the contemporaneous accounts, newspaper articles at the time, magazine articles at the time, memoirs other people wrote, some of them are accurate, you just try to sift through as much as possible and only improve if you feel comfortable is true stuff like the cutting room floor. i didn't want to do another book that is just repeated the same exaggeration. >> host: what kind of story did you write for the times? >> guest: i wrote a whole variety of things. i was on the environment speech for two years i learned that the landfills and badwater more than i ever wanted it to. i did some art coverage for a while, got to introduce some

people. i did some occasional business reporting. i was with them for 15 years and was sort of like a utility player. i wish i could say that i was the star first baseman, but i was not. when they needed somebody to cover something if i was available, off he goes. ..