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PrintBook Review: The Last Gunfight
What really happened in Tombstone
THE LAST GUNFIGHT
Jeff Guinn
www.simonandschuster.com
The Last Gunfight separates the “misunderstandings, exaggerations, and outright lies” from what really happened in a vacant lot in Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881.
The infamous moment that pitted Doc Holliday and the Earps against Billy Claiborne, Billy Clanton, and the McLaury brothers lasted just 30 seconds, but the events leading up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral are just as significant. The Last Gunfight devotes most of its pages to background, historical context, and biographies of the principal players. As previously demonstrated in his account of Bonnie and Clyde, author Jeff Guinn has a knack for colorful descriptions. Of Wyatt Earp’s wife Josephine he writes, “She spent most of her later years concocting G-rated fables to conceal her R-rated escapades as a young woman.”
This is a welcome entry into the Corral canon. Just know that this book may forever make you view that fateful moment as nothing more than a “cartoonish confrontation between good guys and bad guys.”
