The Frontier World of Doc Holliday

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books about Doc Holliday there is.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Worth reading, but there are better Doc books out there.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Worth reading, but there are better Doc books out there.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books about Doc Holliday there is.
Review: Jahn's biography does a fine job in portraying Holliday's maladies and myths--both self-inflicted. Holliday's Devil-may-care attitude sustained him and it seemed to be the same thing that fueled his mystic.

I found this book a fine expansion and exploration of the era and culture of the West (having been to several of the same towns that Holliday lived in) and I thought the author had researched her topic very well. My one criticism is this: I was a little unclear of the narrative of the shooting at the OK corral. She presented the depositions of several of the participants, which is solid history, but the flow of the events seemed disjointed.

Rating:
Summary: The author overreaches herself
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The author overreaches herself
Review: 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.