3 comments about If They Come in the Morning.

1. This book primarily deals with thepersecution of Angela Davis.In myopinion a racist oppressive societywas looking for a scapegoat to furthertheir own conservative law and ordermentality. I am refering to MessersNixon and Reagen.The crime she actually committed was the fact thatshe held fast to her principles.Sherefused to renounce her membership inthe Communist party as a result itcost her her job,and almost cost herher life as well. Thank goodness forthe groundswell of support from thepeople. She was freed from the palehands of racist persecution. In this book you will read many moreaccounts of people mostly blacks whobecame victims of a racist oppressivecriminal society. Angela Davis stands as a beacon forthe downtrodden everywhere. She isin my opinion the most influentialblack activist of this century.



2. This smallish paperback book is just possibly the most influential piece of literature written in the 20th century. The topic is revolution, the issues, racism and sexual discrimination, the incident, the imprisonment of Angela Davis (and many others). There are contributions from some of the most famous revolutionaries of the 20th century. They did not achieve their goals as stated. However, what is revolution? The ship of state confronted their movement and changed direction, no doubt about that. Two overtly racist systems came down, here and in South Africa. On the cover of the book, you may see a picture of the young Angela, smiling, with the large afro hairdo we have come to know. May you be forever young.



3. I read this book during my high school years. I really enjoyed the different authors. It was a great book.

5 comments about Chicago Assassin: The Life and Legend of "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn and the Chicago Beer Wars of the Roaring Twenties.

1. What is it about the gangsters of the Prohibition Era that continues to fascinate Americans?
   
   Jack McGurn (a name he adopted when he began a boxing career; his real name was Vincenzo Gibaldi, born in Sicily in 1902) achieved prominence in the "beer wars" of Chicago's prohibition as the top enforcement man for Al Capone. He is widely credited, erroneously according to Shmelter and other recent writers, with being the mastermind of the St Valentine's Day Massacre. But he was an efficient and effective killer, warrior in the beers wars.
   
   What is the nature of a man who would so easily take human life?
   
   Schmelter takes us to McGurn's childhood in New York where his father was gunned down by New York gangsters in a case of mistaken identity. The New York Police Department was unable to (or didn't care to) bring to justice the killers. Italian immigrants lived on the frontier, where law and order had not yet come. His mother remarried, the family moved to Chicago where his father was a grocer who agreed to sell sugar to members of the Genna gang for use in making alcohol. When he said he would not refuse to sell sugar to all comers, specifically to competitors of the Gennas, he was shot down on the way to work one morning. Again, the Police did not bring the killers to justice.
   
   McGurn, age 19, returned to New York, killed his father's killers and began planning on how to avenge his stepfather as well. The best way to do that he concluded, was to align with the opposition to the Gennas, the Torrio-Capone gang. And thus his career began.
   
   Schmelter takes us through the beer wars, in which it is hard to see that one side had more moral claims than another. McGurn killed out-of-towners imported to murder Capone. He participated in other murders of rivals to his boss. Shmelter gives us the picture of a competent, loyal, if brash and cocky, man fitting into the lawless world of the gang subculture. By looking at McGurn, we also see the culture as it was.
   
   St Valentine's Day proved a pyrrhic viceroy for Capone and the beginning of the end for McGurn, even though in this crime he had no involvement. It brought the full force of the government down on Capone and when he was sentenced to jail for tax evasion, his successor fired the brash Jack McGurn, who was left outside the Outfit, but well off with investments made during his good years.
   
   The final years of McGurn are the years in which the comet descends. His properties became worthless under the onslaught of the national depression. He and his wife gradually descended from relative affluence to poverty when he was reduced to hawking betting sheets at the track. Finally, his efforts to gain reentry to the Outfit were rejected and his threat that he could talk proved suicidal.
   
   One can look upon the body of Jack McGurn, bleeding out his life on the floor of a bowling alley, and feel that poetic justice was served. Shmelter also makes it possible to feel empathy for a man who saw his life disintegrate until death was only the conclusion.



2. Mr. Schmelter does an admirable job at bringing out the essence of McGurn in this fine book. He works with the history given and what newspapers spewed out at the time. There was no proof as to whom or how many men McGurn exactly killed. Finding that out is next to impossible. Also for any other gangster at that time. Their notches in their guns tended to be padded or somewhat overblown. McGurn was accused of almost every murder in gangland Chicago. Some other McGurn myths in history include McGurn being shot in a telephone booth or McGurn placing a buffalo nickel in his victim's hand.
   This book is a excellent primer for those who do not know who McGurn was. Mr. Schmelter is on the right track and the effort was A 1.



3. This brief biography of "Machine Gun Jack McGurn" is an enjoyable addition to the recent bumper crop of books on Prohibition era crime figures in Chicago. I particularly liked the material on McGurn's tragic youth (both his father and stepfather were murder victims and, as an adult, McGurn would personally avenge both men's killings) and his efforts to become a professional boxer. His adopted Irish surname was created to promote him as a pugilist.
   
   Some true crime readers will take exception to some of the gang war hits that the author credits to McGurn. While McGurn was definitely a suspect in several of the murders, many other true crime writers would dispute whether or not McGurn actually pulled the trigger as often as Shmelter suggests.
   
   What is indisputable, however, is the fact that McGurn was one of Al Capone's favorites and frequently served as his personal bodyguard and accompanied him to numerous sporting events and night spots. When Capone was sent to prison, McGurn's stock dropped precipitously.
   
   Capone's successor, Frank Nitti, was no friend to McGurn and effectively shut him out of the organization. By the time of his own murder, in a Milwaukee Avenue bowling alley, McGurn was living in reduced circumstances and seemed to be nearly penniless. He even tried to earn a living as a professional golfer, but his notorious reputation derailed that ambition as newspapermen hounded him during a qualifying round of a major tournament and interfered with his play so much that he missed making the cut.
   
   Richard J. Shmelter writes well and his summaries of familiar events and facts are easy to read. Although fully annotated, the bibliography list reads like a book catalogue for the author's own publisher (Cumberland House) to the exclusion of any other sources. Many of these formulaic titles rehash old material while adding an occasional dollop of new information and "The Chicago Assassin" does not vary too much from this pattern. Sometimes, it feels as if the repeated accounts were added simply to pad the length of Shmelter's book, but that is a minor complaint.
   
   The best portions of the book are those pages that relate to McGurn and his second wife, Louise Rolfe, who became celebrated as "the Blonde Alibi." Rolfe provided her future husband with an alibi that frustrated the efforts of the police and prosecutors to try McGurn as a possible participant in the aftermath of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.



4. This book is an interesting one. It has tons of great info, and other things... The only thing I did not like about the book was that half way reading it I got to page 95 then the next page goes back to 65 then after that it goes back to chapter 10 then after that it skips three chapters and goes to chapter 14... I'm not knocking the author on how to write a book he obviously knows how to write and tell a good story... The book was great until the pages got messed up and three chapters were missing... The funny thing about all this is that my girlfriend bought the book for me off this site as a birthday present along with the Complete Public Enemy Almanac which is one of the greatest books on prohibition crime I ever read...



5. Chicago Assassin: The Life and Legend of "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn and the Chicago Beer Wars of the Roaring Twenties is the story of young immigrant Vincenzo Gibaldi who, through a series of tragic events, rose to become "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn, the top hitman in the Capone organization.
   
   Mr. Shmelter delivers a fascinating, and well researched tale, of murder, betrayal, and a quest for revenge that leads McGurn down a path of death and destruction during one of the most violent periods in American history. As the story unfolds, you find yourself starting to care about McGurn and his wife, Louise Rolfe, (McGurn's "Blonde Alibi"). I even found myself feeling sorry for them as their world began to unravel all around them.
   
   The Whatever Became of...? chapter was a nice touch. It's interesting to see what became of these colorful characters who lead such glamorous and often violent lives. This is an excellent read and well done biography. One hopes that Mr. Shmelter will treat us to more in the years to come.

5 comments about The Man Who Invented Las Vegas.

1. A really fascinating little book, with a very rare quality... it's really the first time this story has been told. Other Vegas books are good, some are great, but most in one way or another repeat the stories we've read before (another exception: Fly on the Wall by Dick Odessky).



2. This is a sketchy at best account of a powerful man during his time. The book is short and did not give me enough details to his insight on Vegas except that he was a gambloholic. It left me wanting to know more about this man and his rise to power. Honestly I enjoyed more his accounts as the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter and the power he had there than his accounts of trying to build the Flamingo. I thought the book would give more insight on early Vegas but to me gave more to early Hollywood.



3. Whatta story! If Mr. Wilkerson only had control of his addiction there is no telling what he could have accomplished. This is a talented man who had half the world by the tail, but couldn't get that 2nd half. He was able to accomplish a lot and was the creator of modern casinos in Las Vegas. This is a short story, but filled with interesting information. Highly recommended.



4. One man's chronic gambling habit became the foundation for modern Las Vegas: The Man Who Invented Las Vegas documents his rags-to-riches story and his impact on building the casinos and hotels of Las Vegas. Black and white photos pepper an examination of publisher Wilkerson's life and investments in the Las Vegas image in a fascinating blend of local history and biography.



5. This is a top notch read. It is hard to find books of this caliber about the mob. The research is scholarly but still accessible. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the birth of Las Vegas and the gritty details of Hollywood history in general.

5 comments about Have You Seen My Mother: True Story of Parental Kidnap.

1. This is a very moving and thought provoking story. Bryan's delivery of his life story took a lot of effort and must have been emotionally draining on him as well. His story reveals what goes on behind closed doors, something I myself as a former 30 yr. veteran of the Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) was ignorant to because they keep everything secret. The sadest part of what this book reveals, is that the JW's elders are NOT qualified counselors and have no specialized training, yet they practice such and have contributed to the suffering of such innocent ones as Bryan and all in the name of their so called, Jehovah God who is actually the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society.
   
   I read the book in 7 straight hours. You can't put it down.



2. Although the story of what Bryan went through is devastating, the book is a fantastic read. I found it very eye-opening and humbling, as many of us take our childhood and parents for granted. I could not put it down. I commend Bryan for the courage and inner strength he found to tell his story. I hope there are more books to come written by this talented author.



3. Bryan Lee McGlothin compelling memoir Have you seen my mother? is the heart-breaking story of one man's quest for love, truth and acceptance. The contrast between the behaviour of both of his parents is most telling. The father professes to be Christian but kidnaps young Bryan from the loving arms of his mother, slandering her in the eyes of the world but more important, in the heart and mind of her love-starved and vulnerable son. The mother, heartsick and desperate in her unsuccessful search for Bryan, flounders mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. While the father "progresses" in his faith and in life, the mother spirals toward tragic circumstances.
   
   Bryan's father's narcissistic selfishness and cruelty are all too familiar to this writer, but the roots of such evil are complex, never easily explained.
   
   McGlothin does a commendable job setting forth his story in his quest for truth. What he discovers will break your heart. It might also educate and humble you.



4. I could not put this book down! Jehovah Witnesses and non-Jehovah Witnessed could benefit from Bryan's heart breaking experience. We all take life, and being a parent for that matter, for granted sometimes. This book truely opens one's eyes to how easily we are manipulated by our social environment and how it molds us to the core...touching every cell of our being.
   The lies and deception that Bryan experienced by being kidnapped from his own mother are devastating! The end results are heart-wrenching....



5. Very well written. It shows how a life and family can be torn apart by a high control group. More of these types of books should be written, to show the world that this happens not just occassionally, but happens frequently. The world needs to know.
   I could not put it down.

5 comments about The Evil 100.

1. This book is not reliable for sources or anything else, for that matter. I have not read it, but I know. I was doing a Google Book search on Benito Mussolini and I came to the first page of this book, and it states Mussolini was born in 1893. This is incorrect. He was born in 1883. I don't know if this was just bad editing or horrible fact-checking on the author's part, but having seen this I cannot say I would trust any other parts of this publication.



2. 
   I can't figure out who this extremely weak book is aimed at. As a serious discussion of evil -- something I held out hope for until a couple of minutes after I cracked open the cover -- it is far too superficial and haphazard. A light and fun treatment of the subject? Um, doesn't writing something about evil preclude that tact?
   
   Instead, we're left with an an almost random list of people who, at the highest levels, are responsible for some truly atrocious events (Adolph Hitler is first; Ossama bin Laden eighth), then eroding into a list of rapists, assassins, and serial killers at the middle levels, before concluding with the world's most famous sexual fetishist (the Marquis De Sade) and a couple of computer virus writers. Almost half of the evildoers are from the U.S.; almost all are men.
   
   None of this is to belittle the horrible to nasty things these people did, though it could be argued that the format of this book does that. The whole concept is similar to learning about food by writing about the hundred most tasty meals ever prepared, or discussing parenting by ranking the hundred best-behaved children ever to be potty trained. It's absurd. Much more interesting would have been an investigation into what kind of psychology makes people evil, or of historical trends regarding the subject.
   
   But there are other problems:
   
   --How do you rank kinds of evil? The whole process requires some kind of formula based on how much persecution is worth how many murders, that the murder of anonymous masses is worth more or less than a high degree of sexual perversion, a lack of sanity, or a low IQ, and puts a ratio on how much property damage is worth a human life.
   
   --Also, how good is the history this information in based on? Comparing the well-documented evils of Nazi leaders with the myth of someone like Vlad The Impaler, the historical character that Count Dracula is based on who is ranked in the top ten and who may or may not have existed ... well, you see the point, which is made over and over again.
   
   --There are many factual errors. The number of dead listed for the battle of Antietam is actually the number of men killed, injured, or missing. Chilean dictator Salvador Allende was not a Communist. And no serious commentator has blamed Iraq's Sadam Hussein for the anthrax attacks in the U.S. in 2001. There are many more examples.
   
   --Then, as with any top 100 compilation, what about those left off the list? Africa and Latin America are woefully underrepresented. What about the perpetrators of apartheid in South Africa or of the African slave trade? Or Fransisco Pizarro, who destroyed the great Inca capital of Cusco and killed tens of thousands of natives so he could send their gold and silver home, to the smelters of Sevilla? What about Abamael Guzman, the founder of Latin Americas bloodiest rebel group, or Alfredo Stroessener, who ran Paraguay as a haven for ex-Nazis and who left his country a generation behind most of the rest of the continent?
   
   In the end, the book's limited value is as a collection of mini biographies of despicable characters aimed at the small niche of people interested in rubber necking at an almost random collection of people who left a negative mark on history. For anything beyond that, this book is not up to the task.



3. After reading the first half-dozen entries and skimming the rest, the summaries are not as concise as they could be and some entries are questionable. The most obvious one:
   John Wilkes Booth makes the list of most evil (number 94), but Linconln should be there instead. Lincoln is primarily responsible for the deaths of 620,000 people because he could have simply allowed the Confederate states to have their independence. Instead, he launched a military invasion, allowed the demolition of cities which caused starvation and disease. He imprisoned thousands of people simply because they were sympathetic to the Confederacy, leaving them jailed indefinitely, without access to attorneys or a listing of charges against them. He shut down many newspapers and confisticated telegraph companies. He refused to meet with Confederate delegations during the war, which could have resulted in a compromise. The South was justified in seeking relief from the unfair tax burden and their decreasing representation in the senate and house. The constitution and other laws effectively permitted secession. Lincoln was not really anti-slavery and slavery was dying out throughout the Americas anyway (it ended in Brazil, in 1888).
   Also, referring to the Civil War battle of Antietam, 22,000 was not the number killed. It was the number of casualties (dead, wounded and missing).



4. So the assassin of Garfield warrants a place among the most evil human beings to walk this planet, but the murderer of Gandhi does not? To be fair I'm not sure either individual should be included in this terribly flawed book, but one was a rather insignificant politician, the other freed his nation from imperialist bondage. Then again, Gandhi wasn't an American so perhaps his death is less significant in the eyes of this particular author.
   
   Many of the choices of evil individuals the author makes in this book are arbitrary at best, and many individuals are included simply because of the lurid and sensasionalistic details of their crimes. For example, Ed Gein was clearly insane and should not be included with people who understood the implications of their crimes, yet choose to commit them anyways, yet he's included among the great "evils" of the world because of the... well... exotic nature of his crimes related to already dead women; while not intending to minimize his actual murders, he is known to have killed only one woman - perhaps three - hardly worthy of inclusion in a book of "pure evil." I'm still shocked that this author would seriously include the creators of computer viruses as being in the 100th most "evil" person(s) in history.
   
   In addition to sometimes very poor choices, the quality of the writing is very poor. (...) There are times he simply repeats the exact thing he wrote a paragraph or two before. (...) There are also times when one isn't sure who the author is refering to in a story. What "he" are you taliking about? The subject of the story? A victim?
   
   Far be it for me to tell potntial purchasers of this book how they should spend their money. Suffice it to say, though, that I received my copy as a gift, and I still think I spent too much on it.



5. There are many things wrong with this book as a list, and as a discussion of the problem of evil. But consider just one thing. This is a collection of malefactors that Islamic fanatics would approve of. Of course Osama Bin Laden makes number 8, and so do the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. But that's to be expected from Americans. But how could they not admire a book in which 46 of the world's most evil people come from the United States? When you add people from Britain, Australia and Canada you get a solid majority from the Anglo-American world. And so many of their crimes involve sexual perversity and anonymous murder, which clearly trumps religious bigotry and systematic injustice in the author's scale of evils. Basically this is a book that starts off with the most infamous tyrants (Hitler is number one), and after the first twenty and thirty places, goes on to discuss mass murderers and serial killers. The four Presidential assassins are included, and the book rounds out with the Marquis De Sade and virus writers. Aside from inadvertently giving aid to comfort to America's enemies by suggesting it has, if not a monopoly of evil, controlling interest in it, the book is superficial and unpleasant to read. The book combines a shallow moralism with a lurid interest in their subject's atrocities, a sort of pornography for Republicans. The moral questions are not really addressed. For a start many of the book's subjects are patently insane, even by the strict and pro-Prosecutor guidelines of Anglo-American law. Is it useful to describe as evil someone who does not have the capacity for moral choice, or which is constrained by severe psychological problems? Sure, says the author. It doesn't matter that Martin Bryant, the Tasmanian mass murderer had an IQ of 66 or that Caligula may have been suffering from schizophrenia or epilepsy.

   Reading the earlier entries one wondered how many of the charges against Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Ivan IV (the Terrible) or Vlad III (the Impaler, who makes the top 10) are actually true or are just propaganda. Good question, since Vlad III's status rests more on the idea that he was the inspiration for Dracula. The suspicion increases when the entry on Hussein starts by blaming him for the anthrax mailings in the fall of 2001, something which he clearly was not responsible for. The historical analysis is not very deep. Salvador Allende was not a Communist. There is no good reason for having Eichmann appear before Himmler, his superior, nor did he have to face 15 charges at Nuremberg. The book overstates the severity and intensity of the persecution of Christians as a result of Nero, while at the time ignoring his destruction of Jerusalem. Likewise Tojo's treatment of American POWs gets more condemnation than the way the treated the rest of Asia. Mussolini's worst acts, his African atrocities, get little space. And there is much that is missing. Neither Khomenei or the Shah appear; the African slave trade is completely ignored, and so is apartheid. Idi Amin Dada appears, but the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide are missed. The Belgian Rulers who may have caused the deaths of 15 million Congolese in their occupation of the country are forgotten. The whole bloody subjugation of the Western hemisphere goes unmentioned, so there is nothing on how Pizarro managed to destroy and enslave an entire civilization out of sheer greed. The Thirty Years War, the Crusades, the conquest of Ireland, the suppression of the Dutch Revolt are all ignored. If Stalin's and Mao's famines are to be condemned what about the Irish potato famine or the (several) Bengal famines? Mobuto, Suharto, D'Aubisson, Stroessener and the rulers of Guatemala get no mention. Nor, needless to say, do Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If Garfield's assasin deserves an entry, shouldn't Gandhi's? (Or for that matter the assassins of Indira or Rajiv Gandhi?) Charles Guiteau was just a disgruntled office seeker and Garfield a mediocre politician. The assassins of Gandhi, Luxembourg, Jaures, Rabin, King, Barthou, Bloch, Milk and Moscone were fascists or something close to it. And what about the judicial murder of Thomas More or Margaret Pole? McKinley's conquest of the Philippines involved many atrocities and the death of one in seven Filipinos. Shouldn't he rank higher than his killer?

4 comments about Night of the Devil: The Untold Story of Thomas Trantino and the Angel Lounge Killings.

1. This book is a must for anyone who is interested in the controversial case of Thomas Trantino. Trantino was convicted, in February, 1964, of the brutal, senseless killings of two Lodi, New Jersey, police officers the previous summer. Initially condemned to death by electrocution, Trantino's sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment, and he bears the dubious distinction of having served more time behind bars than any other prisoner in the Garden State. The author obviously did his homework, read the trial transcripts, and interviewed many close to the case, including relatives of the slain officers. This story is presented in an objective, unbiased way, and Mr. Stout even puts to rest the horrifying (and, thankfully, false) allegations that the officers had been forced to commit sex acts before they were shot. There were at least two minor inaccuracies I picked up on - Trantino's associate, Frank Falco, was a product of Manhattan's Lower East Side, not Brooklyn, and he had two sons by different women, not a daughter - but, for the most part, I found "Night of the Devil" a compelling read which is definitely on the money.



2. This book is riveting. Once I started reading it, it was impossible to stop. Mr. Trout really brings the reader into the story. Even though the events happened over 30 years ago, you feel as if you are there. David Stout is a real journalist. He brings the story to life, he is fair and balanced in his reporting. I highly recommend this book if you have any interest in crime, punishment and what's right/wrong with "justice" in America.
   My heart goes out to the families of the victims.



3. Most of us have views about the efficacy of societal imposition of the death penalty for ultimate crimes such as murder or high treason. David Stout's Night of the Devil will will take you on the forty-year journey of a convicted murderer of two police officers, from the crime through the laborings of the state and federal judicial sytems, as they lurch through the particulars of this case and through the general evolution of our society's unsetteled position over the imposition of the ultimate sanction.
   
   Written by a veteran reporter and author of several mystery novels, this story is thoroughly researched, dispassionate, and riveting. The author is from the old school: present the facts so that the reader can gain insight and form their own opinions. Mr. Stout writes in a clear, highly-paced, engaging manner. Few readers are likely to put this book down for long.



4. I am the sister of Gary Tedesco, the policeman that was murdered and so for me reading this story was very difficult. With that being said, I believe David Stout wrote this story with a great deal of compassion for all the family members and friends that will be forever changed as a result of this horrific crime. If you want to read a true account of the story that has been in the news for 39 years then I would suggest reading this book. David really did his homework.Everyone who believes hard criminals should be released into society again, should read the results of what allowing these two murderes into society time after time did to two innocent lives and the families and friends their lives touched. The two men who murdered them should never have been out of prison in the first place but one is now walking the streets with us again. The policeman got the death sentence and the families got the life sentence.

2 comments about Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes: Robert F. Kennedy's War Against Organized Crime (Capital Classics).

1. Ron Goldfarb's "Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes" is an insightful analysis of the RFK led Attorney General office investigation of the mob. Part memoir and part history, you feel like you are part of the action when you read this interesting book.



2. Overall, too much emphasis on Goldfarb, and not enough on Kennedy. The description of his work in Newport is somewhat dull. However, his thoughts at the end about the JFK assassination connection with organized crime are interesting.

No comments about Mob Girl: A Woman's Life in the Underworld.

2 comments about Ted Bundy: The FBI Files.

1. it appears that these are in fact... official FBI files, but all the interesting information has been blacked out... and so i say
   ...................WHAT IS THE POINT?



2. This book contains very little info and is not what you may think with tons of interesting documents. There is much blacked out on every page. Don't waste your money.

5 comments about Billy the Kid, His Real Name Was .....

1. The author is not a historian or professional researcher. He has no bibliography. He got most of his info off the internet which you know is not usually too accurate. I also believe that he purposefully changes what Brushy Bill Roberts has said in order to make his case against him. He tells countless lies throughout the entire book. It is an absolute waste of time for those who are seeking the truth. It is not professional by any standard. I am open minded to Billy the Kid history and have read countless books on him. You will learn absolutely nothing from this book nor what his real name is as the author ends the book with the title. In other words he has no conclusion.



2. I have enjoyed reading this book, and the different perspective it offers as to the question of "who was Billy the Kid?". The only reason I could not give it a higher rating is that I did find in on occasion to be hard to follow at times. The main cause of this is that the author would some times drop off the last name of people involved at the start of a new section, making it hard to know at times which "Joe" or "John" they were reffering to. Other than that I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the legends of Billy the Kid.



3. This book is not a good read. I have researched Brushy Bill Roberts, and find this book to be full of misinformation. I would not recommend the serious reader buy this book. If you want a good laugh then please but it. I would loved to have known the truth about the book before I purchased it.



4. A good book if you want to learn the facts against Brushy Bill Roberts ridiculous claim. No other book gose into the detail against Brushy and Jim Miller's claims like this one. Otherwise, reads like what it is, a book by an amature author who paid to have it published, and the author makes some bizarre claims to boot. If you want to read the story of Billy and the Lincoln County War, you're better off with the works of Nolan, Utley, and others.



5. This book is definitely for those who have long wondered about the claims of various people that they were indeed the true Billy the Kid. The
   author has researched for years everything he could find about the characters in the book. He uses a nice format of plain print for theories
   about each and, if available, their own words, then in bold type the only conclusion to reach from all of that. At times it reads almost like a novel, at other times gets very technical so you realize the author knows about which he is "speaking." At the back of the book are quite a few certificates of births and marriages, further revealing how well researched this book is.