The books that might sit on YOUR 1st Ed. shelf: Collecting 1st Eds on Wyatt Earp and Tombstone
As I have written, I am much more a book aggregator than book collector. I have gone looking for very few first editions; and I’ve never gone looking for signed copies. Consequently, there are very few books that I have paid hundreds for, none that I’ve approached $1,000. The most expensive was a privately bound, limited edition 10-volume set of scripts for the 77 (I think is the number) Tombstone episodes of THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF WYATT EARP. These were for the final 2 seasons of the 6 for the series, 1955-1961. From internal evidence, the bound scripts seem to have been the property of the series chief writer, Frederick Hazlitt Brown, who wrote 189 of all 229 episodes. (A complete set of scripts for all 6 seasons, contained in 31 volumes (picture shown), bound and embossed in...
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The books that… fill my Churchill shelf. PART 3: History of the English-Speaking Peoples
Churchill, The History of the English Speaking Peoples (hereinafter HESP), (my copy is the American edition, Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1962 reprint; first published 1956-1958). Volumes I-IV: The Birth of Britain; The New World; The Age of Revolutions; The Great Democracies. The four-volume History of the English-Speaking Peoples, begun by Churchill before the Secord World War, is the last book he completed and published. It’s a highly personal view of British and American history (with very little on the English speaking nations of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and even next-door Ireland. As for Indians, Africans, and other non-white colonials, for Churchill they are merely the beneficiaries of British imperial rule.). Largely written in the late 1930s, it was left unfinished when the war erupted. He returned to it after his second prime ministry ended in 1955. By that time,...
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The Books That…. Fill My Winston Churchill Shelf: PART 2: Why Read Churchill Anymore? The Second World War (abridged)
I’m not a book collector. I own very few first or special editions purchased to create or build a valuable collection. Mostly, I just buy, a book aggregator forced to periodically cull my library in order to continue aggregating. I’ve owned very few books written by Winston S. Churchill, but have never culled any of them. Each I’ve always considered special enough to keep, to read over and over when, in childhood, I owned few books; later to prominently place on my first college-era bricks-and-wood plank shelving; later still to repeatedly cart from state to state as my entire library grew from a few books to twenty cases worth; and occasionally to shell out for better editions of old friends. Book collectors and aggregators own books by the scores and hundreds that they’ve never read or will never read...
Read MoreThe Books That… Fill my Winston Churchill shelf – Part 1
Books written by Churchill TIME-LIFE Special Edition of The Second World War (Golden Press, 1960) History of the English-Speaking Peoples (HESP)( unless otherwise noted, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1962 reprint; first published 1956-1958), Volume I: The Birth of Britain: (do not have this yet: on the list to purchase); II: The New World, 1485-1688 (used, excellent condition, no dust jacket) III: The Age of Revolution 1689-1815 (fair condition, no dj) IV: The Great Democracies, 1815-1900) (paperback ed.) Marlborough: His Life and Times: A one-volume abridgment, edited by Henry Steele Commager, containing roughly ½ the original text, focusing on the Duke’s stellar military career at the expense of the political career and Churchill’s attack on the English historian Macauley, who was largely responsible for the denigration of Marlborough as a treasonous, and overly greedy crown subject. (Charles Scribners Sons, NY,...
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Gilded Age greed goes Wild West
Been reading up on the Johnson County Invasion of 1892. In “Freedom Around the Corner,” a survey history of America from 1585-1828, historian Walter McDougall addresses the American gift for hustling, a trait shared by those who hustle in the sense of working hard, for themselves, their families, and in shared community endeavors, and those who hustle others, deceitfully, fraudulently, and aggressively for their own gain. The latter, in unsavory, illegal, even unconstitutional form, was practiced by 1880s-1890s Wyoming capitalist ranchers, Social Darwinists who felt they deserved it all, against the smaller settlers in Johnson and nearby counties. The Johnson County War, in light of being an extraordinary story peopled by a wide array of colorful characters, marked by strong 3 (or 4) act story arc punctuated with dramatic scenes, remarkably has been the subject of relatively few books. ...
Read MoreThe Essential Books on Wyatt Earp and Tombstone
REVISED FRIDAY MAY 9, 2014: A poster on BJ’s Tombstone History Discussion Website (http://disc.yourwebapps.com/Indices/39627.html ) asked for recommendations of the ten best books on Tombstone and Wyatt Earp and Tombstone and also a list of books to avoid. My list of essential books is up to 24, including 4 illustrated books to introduce the unsuspecting to this field. I’d avoid only one book, the late Glenn Boyer’s The Earp Curse. One feels the need for a shower after reading its execrable attacks on anyone who disagreed with his take on the Earp story and his use of hoaxes to tell that story. Plenty of other books have been debunked as questionable history or biography, but I would not avoid them. Earp has a legendary status that has risen and fallen, and the debunked books are a key part of...
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