all right. thank all so much today for coming out today to celebrate joe pappalardo and the release

of war against the west. let's give it. all right. so we do just to do some quick announcements as the bookstore. so we do have other great, exciting upcoming events as well. so we do hope that you take an in those in check out on our website other upcoming events and. then also just to let you know how today's conversation is going to go. so after joe comes up here and gives a great conversation about the book today, we are going to have some time for audience. so i would not be a teacher if i didn't tell you to go and make sure you have your questions ready to go. when we're switching over to that and then we will have an opportunity for a signing personalization line at the end of the today, and that will take place over our tony nook. so if you want to purchase your book, if you've already purchased your book, they are downstairs at the entrance of our store. so make sure that you pass by there. and we do also have some of joe's backlist on there as well.

we do want to take this time to go ahead and ask that you silence your phone if you haven't already. and then also we want to say to just please try to keep the eye always clear. and if you need any additional assistance today with the event, just make sure to reach out to one of our staff members. all right. but about today's special guest. so we have author joe, who is a critically acclaimed and freelance journalist. he is the former associate editor of air and space smithsonian magazine, a writing contributor to national geographic magazine and texas monthly, and a former senior editor at, popular mechanics. this is joe's book. and like i mentioned, we have some additional downstairs. but i'm going to hand it over to joe at this point. thank you so much for coming. thank you. thank you, everyone, for showing up for to talk about the old west and my new book for against the west. i was trying to get psyched up for the appearance, actually, and i was reading some of the

reader reviews and one of them sort of caught caught my eye and said, i know this book is nonfiction, but these characters really -- me off and give me three stars and. i thought i didn't mean to -- anybody off. i didn't mean to anger people. i was just surprised at some of the antics that. my subjects were up to just as much as i think readers are. so with that caveat, the book is set in the latter part of the 19th century. so this in the united states. so this is a time when there's you know aggressive expansion america is going to become it's texas, it's going to become a coast to coast powerhouse. and i wanted experience that through characters i'm very narrative driven i'm not an academic by any by any stretch so to storytelling gets to to the truth than than a thesis would. so i wanted to some interesting characters who experience this

expansion into the west and i settled on the being brothers. there's four of them. one of them most people have heard of. the other three are fairly obscure, even though when you think about it the famous one is the least historically in many ways. but we'll get to all that. there's joshua wood being there is james being there, sam being. then there's the famous judge roy bean, judge roy bean famous really in especially for being an iconoclastic west texas judge who operates out of a saloon underhand in a lot of ways finds people and drinks that you have to buy from the bar, pulls stunts he isn't he's sticking it to the man so to speak. yet he's also the justice of the peace and he lords over that power out there. so he uses position somehow to become nationally known figure.

so i knew about roy being an earlier book set in the late 1800s in the texas rangers. one of them was young back then as an older man, tangled with roy bean over an illegal championship match that he held on the border of the us and mexico. even though it was illegal, both nations so i thought, yeah, this is my kind of anti-hero he's a western legend. made his mark on the west and. there's got to be a reason. i looked into when i started researching more and more and what i found was that, first of all, his influence on history is very marginal. he didn't really do that much. he was involved in a lot of things. he witnessed a lot of things he did a lot things, shady things and bold things. but he isn't a prime mover of history. like a lot of biographers like to profile. you can't take and insert him in

so many important places he's not that kind of a figure but that's who makes history and that's not who made the that's not who shaped manifest destiny. there's lot of books and academic treatise what manifest destiny was, but there's not a lot about who manifest was, who would get up, who go, what was driving, what was the impact when they got there, especially in a narrative sense. when you look at it that way, nothing is preordained about manifest destiny. it was interesting when i looked at even that term, which is really a loaded term and it's a dogma now. and back then it a commonly held belief. it was a term they used in 1845 from then on to say that this of america coast to coast was inevitable and when you look at it from the experience individuals like these being boys is nothing was inevitable it they didn't see it that way

they were constantly being buffeted and swept up chewed up, thrown out by events that beyond their control entirely. and i thought that was interesting some of the that ethos of the of manifest destiny going out west was an individual could make a huge difference. i can be someone there i can build something with my old hand, my own hands one way or the other, no matter what it takes. that's a very individual, individualistic, kind of of an approach. and the had to have been different when they went out there and collided with with all the headwinds, all the people that were already there nature you know, everything economics, politics, warfare and then their interpersonal problems well thrown in so there really they're not they're not avatars of anything. they're character who were dealt a hand and. they played it throughout this transformational in history. the the big thing about research

and roy bean for me was discovering his brother's roi what had his three brothers in each one of them experienced a sort of a different facet of the american west and lot of these experiences time was so dramatic it's a benefit to any kind of an author who's trying to cover this you've got wagon trains rattling down the santa fe from mexico to mexico to missouri and back again. you've got native american diplomacy warfare. you've got boomtowns, you've got trains that are, you know, being stretching across the coast to coast, changing everything shady backroom deals and in brand new cities that time, we're going to be places like san diego, los angeles. but back then was the frontier. and who were the first people who tried to make that america. and there the beings were these brothers, not roy every time,

but the four of them in total. so. well, i mean, we're just recovering from thanksgiving right now. so using your siblings to compare against one another you may be falling victim to it or engaged in it, or at least witness that. it's a it's a common thing and it's useful. it's not useful in the context of a book, it became extremely useful. they're sort mirrors of each other, even even at a distance. and the similarity really illustrate why they went out west. and then we can get to some of the good juicy scandalous stuff about the beans now that the preambles out of the way when, each one of them leaves kentucky a in a totally you in a different way. roy runs away as a teenager. he down to new orleans. he's on a a flat boat. what would happen in kentucky would sell slaves on flat boats and, ship them to new orleans, to the big market. and he jumps on, it's a terrible job. there's rebellions, there's bandits and.

it's completely dehumanizing. he doesn't. he wants out. so he leaves before the other ones. the youngest. so he's out of kentucky. james and sam being go independence, missouri, where is the real gateway to the west? this is where all the wagon trains gather to go on the santa fe trail. it's a it's a it's such a big point of commerce in the united states. i could boogie the the economy of the entire united states of america because of all the silver and and all the specie that's coming in. so it's a hotbed and wants in on that. it's established it's safe. we had an who went there to try and make money so he flows on with that. he jumps in, he wants to get the santa fe trail and live that adventurous life he hears of the tales of mexico, the the the dark haired women and the indian ruins and fighting and all this. he wants to be a part of that

joshua stays in kentucky longer than the rest he leaves with the us army as a cavalry officer. the mexican-american war. so there's a lot of ways to get out and they use all of them just to try and get west they want to leave badly because there's no opportunity for them. kentucky disease and, a really terrible economic situation as made the family contract. you know, you look at their property records always contracting, moving, trying to get by and their father dies. so what do they do at that point? leave kentucky to get due to me. i there's an opportunity out there. i'm going to bring you know they were owners, they were property, they were men who were supposed to be on the rise. and they thought we were guaranteed and they were denied it. and were going to get it out west. that's not the beatings, but that's where they were coming from. right.

so, you know, they weren't rapacious, fierce southerners. they weren't avatars of an american dream. they were, again, just playing the hand that they were dealt to. the hell. now, there's a lot of similarities. they the being owned a saloon and store in kentucky they knew firearms and the horses and all of these skills are directly applicable to what's going on west but the most interesting similarity maybe between these being boys, the four of them, is that they each had a had a pull towards service. now public service very can be very selfish then. now always. right. it's part of the way they cement themselves into this new civilization they're trying to bring to the frontier. you put yourself at the center of and commercially with your saloon politically as a public somehow. and it's the full package. all four of them do it in completely different ways.

james being becomes a justice of the peace, a beautiful public servant. he wasn't perfect by any stretch, but he was very mindful of part of the civilization he was building. and roy, as a justice, the peace went out totally different direction. it was his fiefdom run. he he was more on the supply side of political chaos and even violence. his small town where he lived out in langtry in west texas. so he didn't have so it was manifesting in different ways. sam being becomes the first sheriff of donya and anna county in new mexico. so a definite pioneer as the us marshal as well. i grab t from you right now thank you. horribly horribly dry and i drop my water. okay a lot of those arms were just trying to. i'm on gun my mouth anyhow. we've got public servants, james

and roy sam going to law enforcement. he also operates a saloon and store in mexia in new mexico, where he does very. for a while. and then joshua b goes to california and, becomes the first mayor of san diego and san diego, and also operates a very infamous saloon called headquarters in the l.a. area. and thank which makes him one when he becomes a militia general, he becomes one of the first law enforcement officials, l.a. county history. they're making their mark. they're doing things out there, all of them. but in these different ways and when you see these play out over the span, the decades, the characters really start emerging and the biggest gift that history gave me as an author or

as a narrative author particular was roy. roy up in all of their lives and really inconvenient times and does inconvenient things. there's roy in chihuahua killing a guy in sam and making a getting arrested, causing a riot that causes them to leave. i have to close his store for good and he has to flee chihuahua. he loved living there. there's roy in los angeles fighting a duel in the middle of the street, on horseback and in his family, supposed to be, you know, have a name behind it. and then political heft. there's roy out on bail in mexico, leaving james to pay for it and repair political damage. so he's up all these different times in history making things worse for his brothers. and that was appealing to me not just because have brothers, but because there was a narrative flow through. so when one brother goes out to

california, yeah, there's roy to tie it all together again, mess stuff up, and then leave. it was it was a great way to experience the early part of roy bean's life because that's the part most people, the part he's famous for is his role as a judge in justice of the peace later in life. so he is a he's older man when he leaves san antonio to follow the railroad. he had a saloon and where the railroad camp went, the saloon went and he's traveling along with that. the texas rangers see him as of the only fixtures, the actual bar a is a fixture, but he also was a fixture. so they make him a justice, the peace. they don't have to show up at these railroad over and over and over again. and he carries that title that's given to him basically all the way into his fiefdom in langtry for decades. so he was to parlay that into fame and infamy because his big

skill as superpower was manipulating the media in an early way. he's a for celebrities who aren't famous for anything but being celebrities, and that makes them more maybe relevant to me because how he able to build this myth how is he able to propagate it back then. and the answer is he was on a railroad and reporters drank free. so he would go through his antics when. the reporters would show up, he would grind to scorpion up into a shot and drink it. he would arrest somebody and find them in drinks or threaten to hang them and let them go. and all the drunks laugh, and then the wire services would run it. this is all fine and fine and good, except for the fact he actually a judge and he would he would trend towards making outrageous rulings and statements and, then use the wire service which runs right along the telegraph offices and the train ticketing areas often, either co-located or very close

together. the infrastructure is built out. so he's on an information. information node and he takes advantage that one of his assistant remarked upon much. but you read some of his rulings and you can almost tell. he's trying to say something just for performative reasons. there was a a horse theft case and the reporters the and in the bar and he he pronounces all right we don't need trial. there's a greaser in the box guilty. and that's his attempt at the lowest common denominator. his attempt to grab that attention beautifully transmitted. you hear that he thinks that's the common sense sort of viewpoint. he does that throughout his entire thinking that his view is the one that every man has and he's going to parrot it truth to style. it's new. it's nothing new. it's a tool that works.

an early practitioner in the wire services gave him such a megaphone before there were megaphones, a megaphone for his own personality that it was able to spread literally internationally. one of his rulings earlier in life that gets brought up again and even appears in the english press at the time and there's it's not one of these things where you get outrage in the 21st century. they're outraged at the time it was back when he worked the railroad camp. he had one law book that he would rely and he would use that. you know, it's not in the i can do whatever, do whatever i want, can find whatever i want. but there's a murder case that comes up, which is very rare. and the jury has to determine there's a bigger crime so that he can send to an actual real court, which is something that was his his duty as a justice a justice of the peace. he does this. he got us together the defendant

and and all of his friends show up. he's an irish labor and he's killed a chinese. and now we're always looking a riot surrounding his his saloon and courthouse and he says, all right, well, there's nothing in this book that says, you can't kill a chinese person, so you're acquitted, which is an outrageous, horrible thing. it's like a sterling example of all the terrible experiences that laborers had building the railroads. at the same time, his mandate was keep the peace. it wasn't jurisprudence it wasn't justice. if there was anything close to justice, if he could have had a riot so he thought that was a pretty shrewd way of getting out that you know, even later in life there's never any regret. so so when you look at it it's even understanding his sense of humor. yeah it makes you like him a lot less. the biggest surprise to me that people thought that roy bean was a nice guy and his previous

biographers really sugarcoat his negative aspects. they didn't dwell on of his chicanery earlier in life. they don't talk that much. him being a confederate guerrilla, stealing horses from the union in new mexico so that baylor, general baylor in the confederacy could come in you know and invade he spearheaded that and served as a scout he loved being involved in that kind of thing aggrandizing himself getting a little profit and sticking it to a powerful person and again, that's his m.o. going back through his entire life. and when you see it in that way, it's a pattern that emerges and these outrageous things that he does. you realize he's doing it for and you realize you're doing it because he thinks that the people outside the saloon agree with them. so as outrageous as he is what he's saying, he's not outrageous being an iconoclast he was catering to the lowest common denominator. excuse me me.

now it's all fine and good to trash and roy bean and and say, well, he's a man of his time or, what have you. but i at the brothers i look at and they are each flawed. don't get me wrong. get me wrong. you don't have to love these guys to enjoy the book, learn something from it and think thank god. but, but sam being really has a different view of of almost everything he goes new mexico as soldier he goes to mexico as a soldier and decides that he wants to stay there. he decides that the that the invasion is a land grab by greedy texans. that's him. i'm in austin, so i want to make sure on your feet but that that was his view of it he changed the cool thing about his experience is that he got dropped off at a waystation station military way station all by himself and literally the army forgot. he was there so he took off his

uniform grew out his hair hung out with the locals and was saying if i deserted anyone even notice. so so he has this transformation while he's in mexico. i'm going to stay here. of course, roy shows up to kill someone, and as store and then he has to flee. but when he's in new mexico, sam thinks himself again as a bridge between the mexican-american and his big flaw happens in the civil war. again when roy's back there, he's serving as the us marshal. he's a partizan. new mexico, which is new mexico, a huge part of arizona as well, a gigantic territory. and he was the us marshal and sheriff. so he's has a big responsibility. he basically becomes a confederate official and gets when the confederates get run out of new mexico, short order, he's got to flee with them. of course, roy's already gone. he's absconded with the money that was in the safe and a horse

and a saddle. so they a big falling out. so there there are differences opinion really influence there what happened to their personal relationship in their lives but they were arguing over pretty big things slavery was a really big issue with them and sam later in life telling people in new mexico biographer about that falling out and about that theft and how they left things, new mexico and how it took pretty much to the end of their lives, even that up. so i how can you beat that you know the brotherly you know, betrayal and and you know, reconciliation it's it's again, it's just history giving you giving you lots of gifts i don't want to leave this talk with that talk without mentioning names being who was history's little secret gift to me. no james being is so little known that he doesn't even appear in roy bean wikipedia page. there's biographers who don't mention him. roy mentions in interviews later

in life, and certainly he's all over the newspapers and, the census records. he's hard target, though he's not someone who's got a biography written about him. one there was a reviewer that said that some the brothers had modest achievements and i thought, well, modest achievements are historic to. it's just that no one ever paid attention to them. so and james is modest achievements were actually pretty dramatic just surviving the civil war, setting up businesses. but he terrible luck and that's my favorite james bean story is about james bean and his his terrible luck. much like roy bean james bean like to he was an easy, easy marriage. he would marry anybody. it didn't matter, you know, no questions asked. almost and he didn't do this for the money like. right, right. did mal order basically did mail order divorces too. so not so much the romantic, but james a lot more so. so he unorthodox weddings is one

of his he sticks so much so that newspaper actually follow him around thinking that he's going to do surreptitious wedding somewhere and they catch him doing one of these and it's it's an older couple think they're in their seventies and they wanted a quiet who newspaper people follow squire around he's this quaint figure but he married the wrong people one time he's got offices and he's riding to the office and up comes fannie and and her beau mr. narrative and he says i know mr. harper. and he says, oh, why don't you we're coming to your office we're going to get married. and james says oh, i know fannie owns she's not the boss's daughter. he's a business bigwig. who who james being is and has a lot of deference him there's a good chance that he started up his first shipping business is on santa fe trail. he also tried to have joseph

smith killed who's the head of the mormons so he's a he's not someone you want to mess with him so he says this is going to be a great romantic. i'm going to marry on horseback out in middle of the woods and i'm going to be, you know, always they're going to love me while he does this follows paperwork in the office. the next day, the family's up. they hate the guy. it's too late. he's married, moves in. months go by now now. mr. meredith shows up. meredith catches fanny, owns. i mean, have some sort of flirtatious relationship, presumably because harper fanny owns and your husband is they're jealous he shoots them dead. you invite him into an office and shoots him. so now he's arrested and the owens family is in the middle of a scandal that's only going to get worse and worse. and and worse. fannie owens smuggles in a file, breaks out her husband and. they run off down the santa fe

trail, making scandal even worse. now it's bonnie and clyde. it's statewide going national. so owens is james being is in the hot seat for making all of this happen. he was just trying to do the right thing, bad bad luck. so that's all fine and good. but now the sort of the narrative shifts to sam being sam being in the army. he is on the march into mexico and owens, who was so distraught over his situation and being a fugitive is humiliated, wants to leave town like a lot of santa fe traders, the people in missouri were on the santa fe trail. they want to beat the army to, get their final deals into mexico so they ship load up as much of their wagons and they ship him out and he goes with them. he usually doesn't. he wants get out of town and there's going to be a regime. all the big businessmen want to be there for it to make a short story, long sam beans marching.

they up to owens and they absorb his wagon train make him a major so now major is marching with sam being in the gang mexico fast forward a little bit longer sam being watches as a lone figure rides towards the mexican lines at the battle san rosita and he's alone. it's a suicide charge. and they knew that the soldiers cut him down the horse actually lives. so i was happy about that. the horse didn't used to do this but sam but owens did and so owens kills himself in front of the entire army and and sam being is there to see it so thank you history again for that back in missouri, still a show trial not a show at the circus. the rest of meredith and fanny and the subsequent acquittal. all this takes place and years and years, years. and james being married, no. one for the entire ordeal. later, he restarts his his quaint wedding service. but for a long time, just he

stayed away from it. and they actually when his business went up and down, he actually lived with owens, his son. so the family obviously didn't hold it to too much against him. but this was a, you know, this little known scare i never heard of the scandal, you know and this dramatic gesture, these duels and and the concept of honor and, all these things they manifest in story, but in ways that you don't really think, you know, a gunfight is of a show rather than a sincere attempt to shoot each other are my most of my gunfights you know, the battles were pretty one sided. the politics are insider backstabbing it's familiar it's but it's a twist on people think about the old west and that's what i want to do. i wanted to get not just one face but four and sort of get to a more fractal sort of view of what what the old west may have been like. i could go on with more being

stories or i can open up to questions. don't know how we are in time necessarily. it's up to you. i got good one about the beams in new mexico if you want to hear it. when i hear that one. all right. so, sam, being mine is one of the reasons i like people. me? which one? i like the best. and, yeah, like researching james and roy's a hoot he's always up to no good. but but sam has some of the best sort of character i think, you know, as it plays out and i love the fact that he married james daughter and he's like the nightmare father law he's known as the scalp lord, by the way, he his job, he's a frontiersman who decided that it was a good idea to go to mexico and hunt apache for the mexican government. he would get paid by the number of by the scalps that he would

collect. so because i made so much money doing what they call him the scalp lord. so he falls out of favor with the gang. and in mexico and for good reason. it really seems like he was killing innocent people, their scalps, and then turning in for bounty. so the mexican government with them, he decides to switch and join the united states army while they're marching and. he actually ends up in sam dean's unit, sort of embedded in with his. so they cross paths there and somehow, again, without being neck of just being able to parlay whatever, he's exposed to into an opportunity. he marries petra kercher the scalp lords daughter and they stay together their entire lives and it seems especially compared to roy's horrible marriage it's a very interesting dynamic to have her in the mix because when

she pushes back people seem to listen including so this the scalp lawyer james kercher eventually goes out west and leaves the whole family behind. so he's kind of out of sam's hair. but when, you know, when petra gets her her back up, you feel it almost through history, which is cool. they get kicked out of mercia for being confederate for him being a confederate official and their property seized. so she back in the town and hears this and says, you know, does this little sweet i want to go and look at my stuff for the last time and locks herself in to the house. it doesn't leave until they decide that they can have it back again, but at a markup. so there is you know, there's patrick through, you know, these frontier or frontier people. you think know they're cut from a certain mold. but a lot of times they'll throw you a throw a curve i mean, roy

bean being a scoundrel, you kind of lose the fact that he did have that big personality, that that through. but over time he tried hard that it wasn't charming and it seem like it and the press started to turn against him. he hated that. and a lot of biographers don't focus on the fact that when he got bad press that not bad press that he did bad. that was good press. bad outside of his control. he lashed out at it. so, you know, one time he jumped on board a train and, put a gun in someone's face and said, you never paid that beer, collects the money, jumps up. now, a train robber, he's up for election. so that's not so good. but more to the more to the point. ego is bruised. and when you start about ego in history, that's a that's a big motivator that a lot of times unless you're taking a character driven approach don't you don't see or hear it so so again james

and and sam and roy and joshua all had these person qualities that a expected to run the places that they founded or landed and. honestly each and every one of them their expectations were foiled and in ways that they had no control over even though they thought they did. and the only with the resilience to be of in legendary is roy and. that's really because of the movie with paul newman. i'm shocked that people think that he's a nice guy, but it's because of that and that movie's horrible. it is a terrible movie. it's a disappointing is even worse because it's john houston and john milius you know so just two legendary filmmakers and they just produce this ungodly milius the screenwriter wanted death wish he'd just finished

death wish you wanted a frontier vigil. annie and john houston wanted a guy who on picnics with bears with his, you know, his love interest and neither one of them really reflect on what the actual man roy bean was about a little bit. so roy bean was about sticking it to power. roy bean was about sticking to power and making sure that knew that he did it when he did a hoax. he would always confess to it later when he did a duel. it was always in public when he this prize fight that i mentioned earlier, the the united states government. the president said that boxing is illegal in this. that's going to happen in el paso is not to happen. and the texas rangers, if we have to kill someone, it's not going to happen. the pressure on and roy bean uninvited sends a telegram saying come coming coming to west texas. i'll a little ring in on the

river on a sandbar in between the two countries. because mexico is illegal too. so now he's got two national governments staring at him. the texas rangers who show up at the fight well-armed. and it's a one round knockout. but, you know, voices that are i beat them. he gets involved to be the common sense guy because this case, he really is right that boxing ban was very well a poorly received moralistic and and stupid so he was on the side of that, you know, conventional thought. and in that case, he nailed it. and his best sort of caper in my estimation, that was it that was a good one. and he did get away with it. he made a good amount of money and got a lot of reputation off of that. so it's a roy bean a-plus. so question from anybody, no questions. you got one? yes, please. so my question is, have you ever dabbled in fiction in do you stay mostly a nonfiction? and would you ever consider

branching out with what you know into fiction? no, i i you heard the reaction to me writing nonfiction. right. and i know how george r.r. martin sleeps at night. i mean, i got yelled at for nonfiction characters. do and he's having them murder other and killing off the innocent. no no no no no i. i can't even get to the names. you know, if i came up with fannie owens, i would have scrapped it and would have said it sounded ridiculous. real life so much better if you if you can tell it in a way that, you know, it makes it flow, then you can't you can't beat that. and sometimes you want embellish and you can't. and then you realize with reporting and a little more research, you don't have to. can you also tell us a little bit more about your past? i know you have previous published and then also are you

planning anything for your next beware authors talking about their backlog and future. yeah the previous book to this was was sky morning, which is a profile again, i have a hard time just focusing on the one narrative i always want to candy cane everything together so it's it's a texas rangers on one side and a a of east texas hunters master hunters who went outlaw for probably kind of reasonable reasons the unreasonable doing unreasonable things but they have even crazy people have have of a reason but so that was a big gotten a big gunfight and. so there's my texas rangers and a late 1800s before that i did lot of aerospace so i did a world war two book about bombers and i kind of class, that kind of character. maynard snuffy smith, who received the medal of honor and, then was demoted for

misbehavior. that was sort of it set the pattern for his life. so again, you know, they're heroes are fine, are great if there even is one. but the gray area there is the more there is to there's not much to learn from an airplane land safely. but when one crashes, you can learn a lot so. and then the first book was called spaceport earth and more of a reflection. i went to work for popular mechanics as they are able to travel around in a lot of different space ports watching launches and it's a habit. i have not kicked. i live in corpus christi, which is close to so i and too far west texas has blue origin and so i get my aerospace fix and and stay in texas as can the next book is done first draft and it's and if you get me started you'll need another another hour but it's called it's about a town in the 1920s

so an oil and the texas trying to tame boom kind of want to give too much away but it's like peyton place meets boardwalk empire meets rome maybe it's just a bunch of good hbo shows, but it's all true we get. it's nonfiction, but it's a very it's a more literary approach. i'm even unnerved by that because you have to recreate certain. but it's such a i chose one town to focus on and i'm really excited by some of the characters no one ever profiles the local wrestler, you know, in an oil boom town. so it's not just the mayor and it's not just the guys shooting at each other. and there's a lot of that and it's not just the rangers, it's a whole universe build that. i had a great absolute blast. so i'm really looking forward to this time next year sharing that one. yes, you use the themes to write

about. what made you choose the banes to write about? yeah, it's of all the people why them you know i love the of seeing so many viewpoints i thought too would have made more sense i thought sam and roy you know they had the most interactions they had the biggest have the best sort of narrative and they live the longest it seems natural. right. why do a quadruple biography? it seems it seems like you're going put the reader through a lot of hardship. but when i what i do is i plot out the timeline on these giant pieces of paper and boards, and it looks, like a crazy person, looks like and i look where there's gaps and know, do i have anything for this? what do i know about this? you know what? wait a minute.

roy went to california. what i know about that. and then there's joshua. oh, i can't just ignore that. so they each became own person that needed to have attention paid to them. and a sense and i try to do that with they cross paths with, you know, be it a scalp lord or a native american chief who, you know, who james tangles with know they all have their own self-interest. they all have their own character. if you're big enough, you get you get a place in the book and all of them measured up to that and honestly, i was really hoping that their sister got out of kentucky because wouldn't that have been cool? but she didn't. so so it wasn't five against the west but how cool of that that would have been great. that would have been yet another prism to shine light on what was happening, either by being there or by different or for example, james being is a justice of the peace is a pretty one. he you see him as the first

responder and the first investigator death investigations. that's a terrible job and a necessary job and there's roy justice of the peace. he declared someone dead who was just injured at the railroad site because he didn't want to go. so, i mean, you get this instead of saying this is what a justice the peace should be doing, and as a person in the community, i could just show them through james. so there was a lot of useful moments like that and without plotting it out and i thought, i'm just going to go for it. i'm going to go for all four. well, you all very much. i appreciate you all coming, and i hope you enjoy the book i'll sign them and any way you want. thank you c-span for coming as well. thank you, joe it's been a pleasure. from the people. thank you so much for coming to chat with us and again for everybody who attended. make sure that you pick up

newest book war against the and then we will be in high anticipation. your next one as well. we do again have some additional copies of joe's backlist downstairs. well, if you are interested in picking those up and those are going to be at the very front entrance, the store. so feel free. you can head down there. and we are going to get joe set up for signing and personalization line next. so you again so much to our crowd and then also for joe. thanks guys. thanks for starting

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