6:00 pm – Wine Reception
6:30 – 7:30 pm – Program
The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.
Burrough brilliantly sifts the lies from the truth, giving both elements their due. And the truth is sufficiently wild for any but the most unhinged tastes. All the legendary figures are here, and their escapades are told with great flair—good, bad, and ugly. Like all great stories, Borrought presents this one with a rousing end—as the railroads and the settlers close off the open spaces for good, the last of the breed, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, really do get on a boat for South America, ending their era in a blaze of glory. Burrough knits these histories together into something much deeper and more provocative than simply the sum of its parts. To understand the truth of the Wild West is to understand a crucial dimension of the American story.
