Description: How many movies would you go to see about an outlaw named Henry the kid? probably not 44, which is how many Hollywood has made so far about Henry McCarty, the boy Outlaw who use the Alias Billy Bonnie of course we know him today is Billy the Kid. If you saw the Young Gun movies or any of the numerous other portrayals of the West's most famous boy outlaw, you no doubt have many questions about the real Billy the Kid.Did he actually kill 21 Men, one for each year of his life?Did he carve notches on his gun?Were Billy and Pat Garrett good friends?Did Billy cheat death and live out his life as Brushy Bill?Here's a factual look at Billy the Kid and his world, with many never-before-published photos. This well-crafted book is profusely Illustrated with over 460 images, including over 100 paintings and illustrations by the author, plus rare maps and images that provide a vivid look into the numerous controversial episodes in the Kids short life. It is a revolutionary, new-style history book that is informative and entertaining for young and old alike.
One of the great folk legends of the Wild West, William H. Bonney went from cowboy and rancher's gunslinger to a pure outlaw, forever dodging justice in New Mexico before it was even a state. On the one hand, he was charming, fun-loving, often present at social events, quite appealing to the ladies. Also conversant in Spanish, "Billito" was popular with the Spanish speaking crowd. On the other hand, he had no compunction to coldly kill a man, a sheriff, a deputy—anyone who got in the way of his rustling cattle or horses for an illicit living. He also proved hard to keep in jail once he was caught. It is probably his daring escapes from jails that made him most famous, and this is the main subject of this biography, which traces his story up through his death by a gunshot in the pitch darkness, fired by lawmen obsessed with getting rid of him.
An illustrated biography of Billy the Kid, presented in the form of a timeline that follows the legendary outlaw from his birth in 1859 to his death in 1881, with essays and comments about other people and events that occurred during the Kid's lifetime.
Not a story about me through their eyes then. Find the beginning, the slight silver key to unlock it, to dig it out. Here then is a maze to begin, be in. (p. 20) Funny yet horrifying, improvisational yet highly distilled, unflinchingly violent yet tender and elegiac, Michael Ondaatje’s ground-breaking book The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a highly polished and self-aware lens focused on the era of one of the most mythologized anti-heroes of the American West. This revolutionary collage of poetry and prose, layered with photos, illustrations and “clippings,” astounded Canada and the world when it was first published in 1969. It earned then-little-known Ondaatje his first of several Governor General’s Awards and brazenly challenged the world’s notions of history and literature. Ondaatje’s Billy the Kid (aka William H. Bonney / Henry McCarty / Henry Antrim) is not the clichéd dimestore comicbook gunslinger later parodied within the pages of this book. Instead, he is a beautiful and dangerous chimera with a voice: driven and kinetic, he also yearns for blankness and rest. A poet and lover, possessing intelligence and sensory discernment far beyond his life’s 21 year allotment, he is also a resolute killer. His friend and nemesis is Sheriff Pat Garrett, who will go on to his own fame (or infamy) for Billy’s execution. Himself a web of contradictions, Ondaatje’s Garrett is “a sane assassin sane assassin sane assassin sane assassin sane assassin sane” (p. 29) who has taught himself a language he’ll never use and has trained himself to be immune to intoxication. As the hero and anti-hero engage in the counterpoint that will lead to Billy’s predetermined death, they are joined by figures both real and imagined, including the homesteaders John and Sallie Chisum, Billy’s lover Angela D, and a passel of outlaws and lawmakers. The voices and images meld, joined by Ondaatje’s own, in a magnificent polyphonic dream of what it means to feel and think and freely act, knowing this breath is your last and you are about to be trapped by history. I am here with the range for everything corpuscle muscle hair hands that need the rub of metal those senses that that want to crash things with an axe that listen to deep buried veins in our palms those who move in dreams over your women night near you, every paw, the invisible hooves the mind’s invisible blackout the intricate never the body’s waiting rut. (p. 72)
This book is a review of the life and times of the infamous outlaw known today as Billy the Kid, but in my book I call him Kidd. An explanation is in the book on why I chose Kidd, spelled with two d's. What makes my version of the Kidd's life span different from others is that it includes views of history as seen by the Mexican people that knew him at the time; including my great-grandmother. My research indicates that the Kidd died in his nineties in the early 1950s; I have firsthand accounts of people that knew him at the time, including a story of a man who is still alive that met him in l949. Also included is an account of how Pat Garrett met his demise. I show the connection between my great-grandmother and her husband and the Kidd. I also give an insight on the Lincoln County War correspondence between Fort Stanton and Fort Craig, and Santa Fe; and Colonel Dudley's exit from Lincoln when higher command shipped him out to Fort Union because of his involvement in the Alexander McSween debacle during the Lincoln County War. The historical value of this book, during the turbulent times in the Territory of New Mexico, will be appreciated by countless western history buffs.
