Interview with Bobbi Jean Bell and Jim Bell on LA Talk Radio, Rendezvous With a Writer on my book A Last Serenade for Billy Bonney, winner of the 2024 New Mexico – Arizona Book Award for Hisorical Fiction.
The Secrets of Archery
A lesson in the two aspects of archery that have been passed down through generations of archers.
Billy the Kid Lecture: The Booth Western Art Museum
In the late 19th century a young man named Henry McCarty changed his name to William H. Bonney and became one of the best known historical characters of our Western mythology. We know him as “Billy the Kid.” Interest in “the Kid” continues to grow as new information comes to light to reveal the fascinating personality of a boy orphaned at the age of 14 and cast out into the violent world of 1870’s New Mexico Territory. . .
How Wyatt Earp Became a Famous Gunfighter and American Legend
As well as being a member of the Wild West History Association, I have also been honored as a guest interviewee.
The Cowboys Place in America’s Self-Image
America’s Wild West has played a big part in defining its collective psyche as a nation. In the 19th century the laconic cowboy emerged as a unique standard for independence, self-reliance, Victorian courtesy, and unbending courage. Thanks to a wave of pulp magazines that touted the West as the new venue for adventure and romance, Americans now had Western heroes from the common ranks of the everyday worker. This promise of adventure drew young men not only from the East but also from faraway countries an ocean away.
The origin of the cowboy is found in the Mexican vaquero, and the border Americans readily adopted this “horseman culture” as their own . . . especially in Texas, where the number of stray Spanish longhorns numbered in the millions after the Civil War. The American incarnation of the cowboy took root in the grasslands of the Great Plains and developed a new breed of man and woman with exceptional skill in handling horses and cattle, with the ability to live in the saddle, and with an admirable dedication to a work ethic that stood up to harsh conditions of weather, outlawry, and grueling, three-month long cattle drives to get their beeves to market. Join us to learn about the history of cowboys in the West and the grooming of their image as an American icon.