
The Gunfighters
How Texas Made the West Wild
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Narrated by:
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Fred Sanders
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By:
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Bryan Burrough
About this listen
“One hell of a good read.”—The New York Times
"One of the most important books written on the American West in many years."—True West Magazine
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Big Rich and Forget the Alamo comes an epic reconsideration of the time and place that spawned America’s most legendary gunfighters, from Jesse James and Billy the Kid to Butch and Sundance
The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.
Texas was born in violence, on two fronts, with Mexico to the south and the Comanche to the north. The Colt revolver first caught on with the Texas Rangers. Southern dueling culture transformed into something wilder and less organized in the Lone Star State. The collapse of the Confederacy and the presence of a thin veneer of Northern occupiers turned the heat up further. And the explosion in the cattle business after the war took that violence and pumped it out from Texas across the whole of the West. The stampede of longhorn cattle brought with it an assortment of rustlers, hustlers, gamblers, and freelance lawmen who carried a trigger-happy honor culture into a widening gyre, a veritable blood meridian. When the first newspapermen and audiences discovered what good copy this all was, the flywheel of mythmaking started spinning. It’s never stopped.
The Gunfighters brilliantly sifts the lies from the truth, giving both elements their due. And the truth is sufficiently wild for any but the most unhinged tastes. All the legendary figures are here, and their escapades are told with great flair—good, bad, and ugly. Like all great stories, this one has a rousing end—as the railroads and the settlers close off the open spaces for good, the last of the breed, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, really do get on a boat for South America, ending their era in a blaze of glory. Burrough knits these histories together into something much deeper and more provocative than simply the sum of its parts. To understand the truth of the Wild West is to understand a crucial dimension of the American story.
©2025 Bryan Burrough (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A captivating exploration of the Wild West, delving into the era of gunfighters with literary flair and historical depth . . . Burrough expertly separates fact from folklore . . . A fascinating work of history that challenges readers to reconsider the role of the West’s legendary gunfighters in shaping the identity of the United States.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“A treat for Western history buffs who don’t mind plenty of debunking along the way.”—Kirkus
“The Gunfighters has all the propulsive energy and high tension of a Wild-West yarn. But it has the distinction of being (mostly) true. Burrough takes on the mythic characters of the West with his characteristic wit, thoughtfulness, and eye for the absurd. He tells this story as only a loving—but conflicted—son of Texas could.”—Beverly Gage, John Lewis Gaddis Professor of History at Yale and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
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Days of Rage
- America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling author of Public Enemies and The Big Rich, an explosive account of the decade-long battle between the FBI and the homegrown revolutionary movements of the 1970s. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in a single revolutionary underground, dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government. The FBI’s response to the leftist revolutionary counterculture has not been treated kindly by history, and in hindsight many of its efforts seem almost comically ineffectual, if not criminal in themselves.
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Amazing treatment of tough history
- By Steven on 05-13-15
By: Bryan Burrough
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Sea of Grass
- The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie
- By: Dave Hage, Josephine Marcotty
- Narrated by: Sandra Murphy, George Newbern
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The North American prairie is an ecological marvel, a lush carpet of grass that stretches to the horizon, and home to some of the nation’s most iconic creatures—bison, elk, wolves, pronghorn, prairie dogs, and bald eagles. Plants, microbes, and animals together made the grasslands one of the richest ecosystems on Earth and a massive carbon sink, but the constant expansion of agriculture threatens what remains.
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Enlightening and informative to all people living on the earth
- By Norma Ward on 06-14-25
By: Dave Hage, and others
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King of Kings
- The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
- By: Scott Anderson
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
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From the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Lawrence in Arabia, a stunningly revelatory narrative history of one of the most momentous events in modern times, the jaw-dropping stupidity of the American government, and the dawn of the age of religious nationalism.
By: Scott Anderson
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'Til Murder Do Us Part
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Bryan Burrough
- Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins
- Original Recording
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The case began in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1922 and lasted for over a decade. The killer has never been found, and the case continues to fascinate true-crime aficianados. A bon vivant Episcopal minister, a not-so-virginal soprano in his choir. The wealthy wife. Her oddball brother. Their furtive maid. The snooping congregants. The bumbling detectives. And in the denouement, a trial, one of the more notable of America’s Jazz Age, covered by the likes of Damon Runyon, Dorothy Dix and James Thurber. All of it hanging on the dramatic testimony of a single, strange witness.
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New Brunswick, NJ, here's your audio....
- By Christina -- Audible on 10-17-19
By: Bryan Burrough
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The Undiscovered Country
- Triumph, Tragedy, and the Shaping of the American West
- By: Paul Andrew Hutton
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
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The Undiscovered Country strips away the layers of myth to reveal the true story of the American West. From the forests of Pennsylvania and Kentucky to the snow-crested California Sierras, and from the harsh deserts of the Southwest to the buffalo range of the Great Plains, Paul Andrew Hutton masterfully chronicles a story that defined America and its people. From Braddock’s 1755 defeat to the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, he unfolds a grand narrative steeped in romantic impulses and tragic consequences.
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Dinner with King Tut
- How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations
- By: Sam Kean
- Narrated by: Derek Shetterly
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Whether it’s the mighty pyramids of Egypt or the majestic temples of Mexico, we have a good idea of what the past looked like. But what about our other senses: The tang of Roman fish sauce and the springy crust of Egyptian sourdough? The boom of medieval cannons and the clash of Viking swords? The frenzied plays of an Aztec ballgame...and the chilling reality that the losers might also lose their lives?
By: Sam Kean
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The Old Breed... The Complete Story Revealed
- A Father, a Son, and How WWII in the Pacific Shaped Their Lives
- By: W. Henry Sledge
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The Old Breed... The Complete Story Revealed brings to life an abundance of new material from the original manuscript of Eugene Sledge's classic memoir With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa. By interspersing his own personal anecdotes throughout, Henry Sledge takes his father's work and gives it newfound context, sharing memories of conversations between father and son. The result is a flowing narrative that portrays an intimate look at a WWII veteran and his struggles to adapt to civilian life following the war.
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Excellent addition to a wonderful story
- By Anonymous User on 06-26-25
By: W. Henry Sledge
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The Prophet
- The Life of Leon Trotsky
- By: Isaac Deutscher
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 62 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused such intensities of fierce admiration and reactionary fear as Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. His extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on the revolutionary consciousness. Yet there was once a danger that his life and influence would be relegated to the footnotes of history. Published over the course of ten years, beginning in 1954, Deutscher's magisterial three-volume biography turned back the tide of Stalin's propaganda, and has since been praised by everyone from Tony Blair to Graham Greene.
By: Isaac Deutscher
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Public Enemies
- America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Campbell Scott
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Abridged
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In Public Enemies, Bryan Burrough strips away a thick layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to tell the full story of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and an assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers.
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Need the unabridged version
- By Craig Hansen on 07-28-04
By: Bryan Burrough
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The Beast in the Clouds
- The Roosevelt Brothers's Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda
- By: Nathalia Holt
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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During the 1920s, dozens of expeditions scoured the Chinese and Tibetan wilderness in search of the panda bear, a beast that many believed did not exist. When the two eldest sons of President Theodore Roosevelt sought the bear in 1928, they had little hope of success. Together with a team of scientists and naturalists, they accomplished what a decade of explorers could not, ultimately introducing the panda to the West. In the process, they documented a vanishing world and set off a new era of conservation biology.
By: Nathalia Holt
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Midnight on the Potomac
- The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America
- By: Scott Ellsworth
- Narrated by: Scott Ellsworth
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Told with a thrilling pace, New York Times bestselling author and historian Scott Ellsworth has written the most compelling new book about the Civil War in years. Focusing on the last, desperate months of the war, when the outcome was far from certain, Midnight on the Potomac is a story of titanic battles, political upheaval, and the long-forgotten Confederate terror war against the loyal citizens of the North.
By: Scott Ellsworth
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Taking Midway
- Naval Warfare, Secret Codes, and the Battle That Turned the Tide of World War II
- By: Martin Dugard
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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From Martin Dugard, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series—with more than twelve million copies sold—comes a fast-paced, dramatic account of the famous yet little understood battle that turned the tide of World War II.
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Great way to learn history
- By Anonymous User on 05-27-25
By: Martin Dugard
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