Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West

Tom Clavin

Feb 2017 · Sold by St. Martin's Press

About this ebook

The instant New York Times bestseller!

Dodge City, Kansas, is a place of legend. The town that started as a small military site exploded with the coming of the railroad, cattle drives, eager miners, settlers, and various entrepreneurs passing through to populate the expanding West. Before long, Dodge City’s streets were lined with saloons and brothels and its populace was thick with gunmen, horse thieves, and desperadoes of every sort. By the 1870s, Dodge City was known as the most violent and turbulent town in the West.

Enter Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. Young and largely self-trained men, the lawmen led the effort that established frontier justice and the rule of law in the American West, and did it in the wickedest place in the United States. When they moved on, Wyatt to Tombstone and Bat to Colorado, a tamed Dodge was left in the hands of Jim Masterson. But before long Wyatt and Bat, each having had a lawman brother killed, returned to that threatened western Kansas town to team up to restore order again in what became known as the Dodge City War before riding off into the sunset.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin's Dodge City tells the true story of their friendship, romances, gunfights, and adventures, along with the remarkable cast of characters they encountered along the way (including Wild Bill Hickock, Jesse James, Doc Holliday, Buffalo Bill Cody, John Wesley Hardin, Billy the Kid, and Theodore Roosevelt) that has gone largely untold—lost in the haze of Hollywood films and western fiction, until now.

Ratings and reviews

Very informative of those years in Dodge city, A very good read.

More honest than most Western 'histories'

excellent and well researched. truly a pleasure to read. I was sorry to come to the end. simply fascinating!!!

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 covering entertainment, sports, and the environment. 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, The Last Stand of Fox Company, and Last Men Out. The Heart of Everything That Is is being developed as a feature by Ridley Scott Films, Fox Company has been optioned and adapted for the big screen, and Last Men Out is being developed as a 10-hour limited series by the Levinson/Fontana production company. He lives in Sag Harbor, NY.