it was sort of slow at first while he built the characters, but by the third or fourth chapter it picked up so fast it was all i could do to put it down. its filled with vivid descriptions of the black hills and surrounding areas. the author does such a fine job of story telling that you really grow to care about the main characters, and you despise the villians even more.

While this book is certainly an entertaining read, and covers Holliday's life quite fully, I consider the scholarship somewhat suspect.

The problem is that, rather than confine her account to the facts, the author often states how Doc felt, or what he thought about various things, people, events, etc. throughout the book. There is just no way she could possibly have such detailed and complete knowledge about such things, since Holliday never kept a diary, and indeed the only written accounts directly attributable to him were some letters written to his cousin, a Catholic nun - none of which go into the level of detail that would be required for Ms. Johns to know all of the things she appears to know. Most of what we know about Holliday comes from what others (many of whom disliked him cordially) said or wrote about him. Yet Ms. Johns writes as though she has an inside track on his innermost thoughts.

If she actually qualified such statements with words like "It seems probable that...", "it is very likely that...", or "the evidence clearly indicates that..." this would solve the problem; after all, it is a historian's job to present possible explanations for things the bare facts may not explain sufficiently, and to try and see past events to the causes and motivations behind them. But speculation and supposition MUST be labelled as such. To present it as though it were incontrovertible fact is poor scholarship. As a historian myself, I know this would never fly if the author were presenting this as a graduate thesis.

Ms. Johns is also inclined to make some pretty wild claims, such as Wyatt Earp's and Doc Holliday's "...friendship, may have caused many deaths, even Doc's own."(p.134) How Holliday's death from tuberculosis, several years after he parted company with Wyatt could, in any way, be attributable to Earp is a complete mystery to me. And this is only one example of some of the author's questionable assertions.

If your looking for entertainment, you'll enjoy this book. But I consider much of the information contained herein to be highly suspect, given that the author's scholarship is often very sloppy.

If you're interested in the life of Doc Holliday, than you will probably want to read this book.

It is definitely filled with some historical truths, but at the same time the author tries to tell the reader what Doc might have been feeling when relating things that happened to him. I found that to be slightly annoying, because it's just based on pure conjecture. Sometimes it seems more like a fictional story rather than factual information.

It also seems like more information could have been put into the book regarding the relationships between him and Kate and him and Wyatt Earp.

All in all a worthwile book, but one not too put too much credence into. "Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait," by Karen Holliday Tanner is a better choice for the Doc Holliday fan. It has a good deal more factual information information about Doc, and much of it is based on family records, letters, etc.

I am basically an expert on Doc Holliday so when I read this book I was impressed with how accurate the author was. Many authors try to make him out to be either really good or really bad but Jahns brings out both sides of him. I greatly admire Doc for both his good and bad qualities. He feared nothing and yet was full of respect and undying loyalty for his friends. He is one of the most fascinaing people in all of history and this book gives alot of info about this interesting man.

Over all, I was disappointed in this book. Early in this book (pg 31) Mr Turner writes in reference to the Little BigHorn battle, "Some of Custer's personal family members, including his brother Captain Tom Custer, Nephew Boston Custer, and a brohter in law were killed with him in the battle..." Boston Custer was George Custer's brother. Not his nephew. This glaring mistake made me skeptical of his research. But the biographical information on Wild Bill was just a rehashing of previous material anyway. Turner relied heavily on Joesph G Rosa's earlier works on this topic and he does give him credit. The strength of this work is the vivid picture that Turner aptly describes of Deadwood during Hickok's time. If one is looking for a very detailed picture of Deadwood, this is a great source. But as a biography on Hickok this pales in comparison to Rosa's work on the subject.