Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press Today, Kansas is a peaceful place. Most residents have forgotten that the state was the scene of some of the most violent incidents in Western history. Legends walked the streets of Kansas during those deadly years: Bill Hickock, the Earp brothers and Clay Allison to name a few. Veteran historian Wayne C. Lee presents the stories of more than sixty incidents, illustrated with almost one hundred photographs.
Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday—such are the legendary names that spring to mind when we think of the western gunfighter. But in the American West of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thousands of grassroots gunfighters straddled both sides of the law without hesitation. Deadly Dozen tells the story of twelve infamous gunfighters, feared in their own times but almost forgotten today. Now, noted historian Robert K. DeArment has compiled the stories of these obscure men. DeArment, a life-long student of law and lawlessness in the West, has combed court records, frontier newspapers, and other references to craft twelve complete biographical portraits. The combined stories of Deadly Dozen offer an intensive look into the lives of imposing figures who in their own ways shaped the legendary Old West. More than a collective biography of dangerous gunfighters, Deadly Dozen also functions as a social history of the gunfighter culture of the post-Civil War frontier West. As Walter Noble Burns did for Billy the Kid in 1926 and Stuart N. Lake for Wyatt Earp in 1931, DeArment—himself a talented writer—brings these figures from the Old West to life. John Bull, Pat Desmond, Mart Duggan, Milt Yarberry, Dan Tucker, George Goodell, Bill Standifer, Charley Perry, Barney Riggs, Dan Bogan, Dave Kemp, and Jeff Kidder are the twelve dangerous men that Robert K. DeArment studies in Deadly Dozen: Twelve Forgotten Gunfighters of the Old West.
A serial killer. A deadly vendetta. And Christmas is just beginning… Sheriff Mac McKnight has his reasons for hating Christmas. But when a serial killer targets Mac's sleepy Kansas town, the holidays quickly go from dreaded to deadly. Now he's relying on the insight of newly deputized Callie Stevens to track down the killer. Only, Mac's in danger of falling for his cheery blonde coworker—who just happens to match the profile of the killer's Christmas victims… From Harlequin Intrigue: Seek thrills. Solve crimes. Justice served.
The complete story of the controversial county seat wars that raged in Kansas from 1885 to 1892 is told in this narrative that relives the violence that only avarice can breed and offers detailed portraits of such notorious participants as Sam Wood, Bat Masterson, Theodosius Botkin, and Bill Tilghman.
Kansans like to think of their state as a land of industrious, law-abiding and friendly people, and for the most part they are correct. But its history has many tales of murders, cons, extrajudicial killings and other crimes. Its restive frontier attracted menacing characters, such as a cowboy who murdered a man for snoring, the serial-killing Bender family and the train-robbing James-Younger Gang. Although the area was eventually settled, the scandals did not cease. Learn about how a quack doctor nearly won the governorship, a decommissioned nuclear missile silo housed the largest LSD manufacturing operation in American history and more. Author Adrian Zink explores the salacious side of Kansas history in these wild and degenerate stories.
Take a step back in time with the Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw women of the Midwest. Join author Chris Enss as she digs up and reveals startling facts about some of the most fascinating renegade women of the Midwest. Meet Flora Mundis, the horse thief who disguised herself as a man; Victoria Woodhull, out-spoken activist for free love, con artist, and the first female candidate for president; Ma Barker, mother of the notorious Barker Gang; Opal Long and Patricia Cherrington, trusted sisters of the Dillinger Gang; and many more. Experience history as if you were actually there. Stand witness to the trial and hanging of Elizabeth Reed, and ride the rails with Fannie and Jennie Freeman, the mother-daughter team who bilked railroad companies out of more than $150,000. In eleven captivating profiles, Enss brings to life the stories of these fascinating pistol-packing, horse-thieving, poker-swindling outlaws.
Since the shocking news first broke in 1876 of the Seventh Cavalry’s disastrous defeat at the Little Big Horn, fascination with the battle—and with Lieutenant George Armstrong Custer—has never ceased. Widespread interest in the subject has spawned a vast outpouring of literature, which only increases with time. This two-volume bibliography of Custer literature is the first to be published in some twenty-five years and the most complete ever assembled. Drawing on years of research, Michael O’Keefe has compiled entries for roughly 3,000 books and 7,000 articles and pamphlets. Covering both nonfiction and fiction (but not juvenile literature), the bibliography focuses on events beginning with Custer’s tenure at West Point during the 1850s and ending with the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Included within this span are Custer’s experiences in the Civil War and in Texas, the 1873 Yellowstone and 1874 Black Hills expeditions, the Great Sioux War of 1876–77, and the Seventh Cavalry’s pursuit of the Nez Perces in 1877. The literature on Custer, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and the Seventh Cavalry touches the entire American saga of exploration, conflict, and settlement in the West, including virtually all Plains Indian tribes, the frontier army, railroading, mining, and trading. Hence this bibliography will be a valuable resource for a broad audience of historians, librarians, collectors, and Custer enthusiasts.
From one of America’s smartest political writers comes a “captivating and comprehensive journey” (#1 New York Times bestselling author David Limbaugh) of the United States’ unique and enduring relationship with guns. For America, the gun is a story of innovation, power, violence, character, and freedom. From the founding of the nation to the pioneering of the West, from the freeing of the slaves to the urbanization of the twentieth century, our country has had a complex and lasting relationship with firearms. In First Freedom, nationally syndicated columnist and veteran writer David Harsanyi explores the ways in which firearms have helped preserve our religious, economic, and cultural institutions for over two centuries. From Samuel Colt’s early entrepreneurism to the successful firearms technology that helped make the United States a superpower, the gun is inextricably tied to our exceptional rise. In the vein of popular histories like American Gun, Salt, and Seabiscuit, Harsanyi takes us on a captivating and thrilling ride of Second Amendment history that demonstrates why guns are not only an integral part of America’s past, but also an essential part of its future. First Freedom is “a briskly paced journey…a welcome lesson on how guns and America have shaped each other for four hundred years” (National Review).
This two-volume work offers a comprehensive examination of the distressing topics of transnational crime and the implications for global security. National security is a key concern for individual nations, regions, and the global community, yet globalism has led to the perfusion of transnational crime such that it now poses a serious threat to the national security of governments around the world. Whether attention is concentrated on a particular type of transnational crime or on broader concerns of transnational crime generally, the security issues related to preventing and combatting transnational crime remain of top-priority concern for many governments. Transnational Crime and Global Security has been carefully curated to provide students, scholars, professionals, and consultants of criminal justice and security studies with comprehensive information about and in-depth analysis of contemporary issues in transnational crime and global security. The first volume covers such core topics as cybercrime, human trafficking, and money laundering and also contains infrequently covered but nevertheless important topics including environmental crime, the weaponization of infectious diseases, and outlaw motorcycle gangs. The second volume is unique in its coverage of security issues related to such topics as the return of foreign terrorist fighters, using big data to reinforce security, and how to focus efforts that encourage security cooperation.
