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A new history of railroad women and new biographies of John Wesley Hardin, Texas Jack, military wives in Arizona, plus an introspective look at the tragedy of Indian massacres.
The West has always been that unknown, that unexplored frontier, something mystical and primitive to be feared and conquered, and many Americans, like John Omohundro, better known as Texas Jack, became one of those frontiersmen.
In Matthew Kern’s new book “Texas Jack: America’s First Cowboy Star,” he strips away the romantic myth of the American cowboy and gives a raw and honest expose of a legendary icon of the West.
The book took three and half years to write; two years of research and a year and a half of revising and editing. Kerns original goal was to write a fictional story about the year Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill, and Texas Jack did a theatrical tour together. While he researched the men, he found multiple biographies of Hickok and Cody, and only one slim book about Texas Jack, written back in the mid-1950s.