Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell

by Tom Clavin

Overview

THE INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"Tombstone is written in a distinctly American voice." —T.J. Stiles, The New York Times

“With a former newsman’s nose for the truth, Clavin has sifted the facts, myths, and lies to produce what might be as accurate an account as we will ever get of the old West’s most famous feud.” —Associated Press

The true story of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the famous Battle at the OK Corral, by the New York Times bestselling author of Dodge City and Wild Bill.

On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, eight men clashed in what would be known as the most famous shootout in American frontier history. Thirty bullets were exchanged in thirty seconds, killing three men and wounding three others.

The fight sprang forth from a tense, hot summer. Cattle rustlers had been terrorizing the back country of Mexico and selling the livestock they stole to corrupt ranchers. The Mexican government built forts along the border to try to thwart American outlaws, while Arizona citizens became increasingly agitated. Rustlers, who became known as the cow-boys, began to kill each other as well as innocent citizens. That October, tensions boiled over with Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne confronting the Tombstone marshal, Virgil Earp, and the suddenly deputized Wyatt and Morgan Earp and shotgun-toting Doc Holliday.

Bestselling author Tom Clavin peers behind decades of legend surrounding the story of Tombstone to reveal the true story of the drama and violence that made it famous. Tombstone also digs deep into the vendetta ride that followed the tragic gunfight, when Wyatt and Warren Earp and Holliday went vigilante to track down the likes of Johnny Ringo, Curly Bill Brocius, and other cowboys who had cowardly gunned down his brothers. That "vendetta ride" would make the myth of Wyatt Earp complete and punctuate the struggle for power in the American frontier's last boom town.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250214591
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/21/2020
Series:	Frontier Lawmen
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	3,988
File size:	27 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

TOM CLAVIN is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and has worked as a newspaper and web site editor, magazine writer, TV and radio commentator, and a reporter for The New York Times. He has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, and National Newspaper Association. His books include The Heart of Everything That Is, Halsey’s Typhoon, and Reckless. He lives in Sag Harbor, NY.
TOM CLAVIN is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and has worked as a newspaper editor, magazine writer, TV and radio commentator, and a reporter for The New York Times. He has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, and National Newspaper Association. His books include the bestselling Frontier Lawmen trilogy—Wild Bill, Dodge City, and Tombstone—and Blood and Treasure with Bob Drury. He lives in Sag Harbor, NY.

Table of Contents

Author's Note
Prologue

Act I: The Territory

1. "Men of Restless Blood"
2. "Sunlight Into Our Hearts"
3. "I'll Get Every Son of a Bitch"
4. "The Only Stone You'll Ever Find"

Act II: The Brothers

5. "Desperate Characters"
6. "Three Peas in a Pod"
7. "Nobody Much Like Him"
8. "A City Upon a Hill"
9. "You Will Have to Fight Anyway"
10. "And Incredible Beauty"

Act III: The Cowboys

11. "Give Up That Pistol"
12. "Very Lively Town"
13. "Strike Up a Tune"
14. "Dead When He Hit the Ground"
15. "I Hold for Nobody!"
16. "The Fury of the Flames"
17. "Revenge Seems the Order of the Day"

Act IV: The Gunfight

18. "Rather Die Fighting"
19. "Geronimo Is Coming!"
20. "Kill Us or Be Killed"
21. "Right Here, Right Now"
22. "The Fight's Commenced"
23. "It Had Come at Last"

Act V: The Vendetta

24. "It Was a Fight for Life"
25. "A Smoldering Fire"
26. "I'm Your Huckleberry"
27. "A Bad Character Sent to Hell"
28. "A Bloody, Wretched Business"
29. "Armed to the Teeth"

Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Selected Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

02/03/2020

The 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Ariz., was “the last gasp of violent lawlessness in a closing frontier,” according to this scrupulous history. Journalist Clavin (coauthor, Valley Forge) details the origins of the boomtown’s name (the prospector who filed the area’s first silver claim had been told “the only stone you’ll find out there is your tombstone”) and the clash of mining, ranching, and civic interests that set the stage for the shootout. Lawmen Wyatt and Virgil Earp arrived in Tombstone in 1879 and were eventually joined by their younger brother Morgan and Wyatt’s friend Doc Holliday. Tensions rose between the Earp clan and the McLaury and Clanton families, ranchers who supplied the town with beef by stealing cattle and squatting on public lands. An attempt by the Earps to uphold a recently passed gun ordinance sparked the firefight, which killed Billy Clanton and Frank and Tom McLaury and set off a chain of events including Virgil’s maiming, Morgan’s murder, and Wyatt and Doc’s “vendetta ride” against the cowboys they held responsible. Clavin briskly sketches dozens of historical figures and gamely interrogates primary and secondary sources to separate fact from fiction. Though other histories, including Jeff Guinn’s The Last Gunfight, have told the story more definitively, this animated account entertains. Agent: Nat Sobel. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Clavin’s out to dispel the myths…[interjecting] some wry commentary into his breezy narrative style…It’s all through fascinating lore. And would you believe that the gunfight at the OK Corral didn’t even take place at the OK Corral?” —NPR

“With a former newsman’s nose for the truth, Clavin has sifted the facts, myths, and lies to produce what might be as accurate an account as we will ever get of the old West’s most famous feud.” —Associated Press

“Clavin shows that there is more to the story of Tombstone than the Earps and the well-known gunfight. Readers who enjoyed the first two books in this popular history trilogy will look forward to this excellent and fitting conclusion.’” —Library Journal

"Rootin'-tootin' history....Updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin's careful research and vivid writing." —Kirkus Reviews

"Clavin briskly sketches dozens of historical figures and gamely interrogates primary and secondary sources to separate fact from fiction. This animated account entertains." —Publishers Weekly

"In “Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell,” [Clavin] does a yeoman’s job of combining original research with a knack for page-turning narrative that gives readers an exciting tour of the celebrated gunfight at the O.K. Corral." —Christian Science Monitor

"Commemorated in hundreds of books, songs, movies and television shows, the gunfight [at the OK Corral] has often been portrayed as the consummate battle between order and chaos, virtue and vice. But as Clavin reminds us in [his] recent book on the infamous clash, the men behind the badges were hardly exemplars of righteousness. Trot[s] along at a brisk pace." —Wall Street Journal

"Clavin...is steadfast in researching and describing the imperfections as well as the virtues of Earp’s character and pursues the most likely version of the event with the doggedness of Earp’s vengeance posse." —Lincoln Journal Star

"Tombstone is written in a distinctly American voice." —T.J. Stiles, The New York Times

From the Publisher

02/07/2020

Clavin continues his survey of frontier history and myth (after Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West and Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier's First Gunfighter), offering a chronology of Tombstone, the Arizona town made famous by shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. Clavin shows that there is more to the story of Tombstonethan the Earps and the well-know gunfight. Organized into five parts, the book surveys the region's history, including perspectives of Native Americans, prospectors, politicians and territorial government leaders, outlaws, and lawmen. He also details the clash of powers that resulted in the infamous "vendetta ride" by Wyatt Earp and his associates. Like his previous titles, the book is filled with biographical details, primary souces, dialog, and textual references to other works and films on the subject. VERDICT Readers who enjoyed the first two books in this popular history trilogy will look forward to this excellent and fitting conclusion on one famous town of the "Wild West."—Patricia Ann Owens, formerly at Illinois Eastern Community College, Mt. Carmel

Library Journal

2020-01-20
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.

The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.

Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.

Kirkus Reviews