Born in frontier Illinois on May 27, 1837, to William and Polly Hickok of old New England stock, J. B. “Wild Bill” Hickok lived until August 2, 1876. In those thirty-nine years he became a legend due to his resourcefulness
in living and working on the developing plains where Indigenous tribes were fighting with the post-Civil War military, where the network of
railroads was expanding, and where rough and tumble settlements offered opportunities for a physically imposing man with a natural ability to shoot straight. Such an individual made friends and enemies, becoming an irresistible source of fodder for the journalists of his day—including the big city newspapers that craved stories that sold well on street corners.
Author Craig Crease is a retired Kansas City insurance executive and lifelong self-described “investigative historian.” As Crease explains in the introduction, it’s a fact that Wild Bill had western adventures and close calls, took impetuous actions, and left behind real and tall tales wherever he went. The book, therefore, has two themes. It is both “a conventional… cradle-
to-grave biography, supported by factual basis,” and “a revelatory take-down of the many myths and legends that have clouded and obscured the real life of James Butler Hickok for nearly 150 years” (p. 1).
In the following 529 pages Crease does just that, offering a year by year, sometimes week by week, life of his subject along with three appendices: how the Hickok stories and myths were born and sustained; tracing Wild Bill’s weapons and personal items from the day of his death to today’s auction houses; deflating the imposters who have appeared over the years
claiming to be his offspring.
While carefully citing his sources in the book’s endnotes, Crease assists his case and the reader’s critical eye by quoting extensively from letters, government archives, newspaper accounts, etc., so that his audience can
comprehend the variety of sources he is using to support the volume’s purposes. This is not the book for one who delights in regaling relatives and friends with his knowledge of this western legend. It is, however, the book to have and internalize for someone who wants to get straight the story of James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok and how a singular fellow making a living on the American frontier became a household name in his day and ours.
Michael Smith, Overland, KS