Blame Texas, and Maybe the South!

Burrough, Bryan.  The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild.  New York: Penguin Press, 

        2025.  ISBN: 9781984878908

 

 

Do the names Wild Bill Hickok, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Luke Short ring a bell with you?  Or maybe the Shootout at the O.K. Corral?  Or just about any western novel or movie which has a gunfight (High Noon) or gunslinger as a hero (Louis L'Amour's The First Fast Draw).  Well Bryan Burrough makes a case for blaming Texas and its exports of shootists, gunmen, and "range detectives" for the violence that swept the West after the Civil War.  

Burrough opens The Gunfighters with a chapter on why he is focusing on Texas.  He then delves into the history of the first gunfighters with the Texas Rangers in the 1840s and California in the 1850s before the 1865 fight between Wild Bill Hickok and Davis Tutt that many claim was the "first Western gunfight."  Mark Twain in Roughing It discussed the mystic of the gunfighter.  Burrough in the next seventeen chapters covers the gamut of the West from 1865 Texas to Kansas in the 1870s, Dodge City, a detour to the Midwest with Jesse James, the Texas invasion of New Mexico (think Billy the Kid), Tombstone (AZ) with the feud between the Cowboys and the Earps, the range wars in Wyoming and Montana (Tom Horn & "Deacon" Jim Miller), Oklahoma in the 1890s, and finishing with Butch Cassidy.  The final chapter - From Headlines to History - provides the endings to various of the gunfighters in the 20th century.  

If a reader is interested in the truth behind the legends of the West, they would do well to pick up and perusing Bryan Burrough's The Gunfighters!

What are you playing?

Clare, Tim.  Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human.  New York: Abrams Press, 2025.

       ISBN: 9781419780561

 

 

Do you play games?  In a different time did you play games?  If so, then this book is for you!  In Across the Board, Tim Clare talks about what makes board games or table games so universal and yet so unique.  

Tim Clare starts off by defining what a game is.  He then sets out a list of the sort of games he will discuss -chess, Monopoly, Game of Life, card games such as poker or Uno, and role-playing games such as dungeons & Dragons.  And yes, he does delve into philosophy at times.  

In fourteen chapters, Clare covers a wide swath of game types.  "Dicing with Death" opens with several cases of folks in Sweden rolling dice to see who would live and who would die.  The rest of the chapter talks about the long history of dice games.  Another chapter - "To Ur is Human" - deals with the various games Sir Leonard Woolley found when excavating a tomb at Ur in Iraq in the 1920s.  The rules for the game were discovered in the 1980s by Dr. Irving Finkel.  Buddha and his ant-gaming sermon gets mentioned in regard to dice games.  In the "Goose Gets Stuffed" Clare discusses how games seem to go in cycles through out history when the comparison of medieval Stuff the Goose being very similar in concept to the ancient Egyptian Mehen game.  There is an obligatory chapter on Monopoly which delves into the sordid history of the game and chapters on card games of all types.  One of those card games has the players hunting for lines of Japanese poetry.  Then there is Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon card games.  There is a chapter on Mancala - the bean game which is played in Africa and across the Pacific Ocean.  Of course chess, checkers, and the like are covered.  Then there are the role-playing chapters, both those done with a board and the live action variety.  In the final chapter, Clare lets the reader in on his secret - he wrote Across the Board to figure out why he loves playing and collecting games.  

So if you enjoy games, or just enjoy finding out the history of something, pick up Across the Board and find find out what makes you human!   You will enjoy the trip!

Why all the questions?

Parasram, Ajay, and Alex Khasnabish.  Frequently Asked White Questions.  Halifax, Nova Scotia, 

        Canada: Fernwood Publishing, 2022.  ISBN: 9781773635576

 

 

So what questions do you have about race or race relations that you would like answered?  Ajay Parasram and Alex Khasnabish, two mixed raced Canadians, have distilled the questions they have frequently encountered during their online forums (Safe Space for White Questions) on race relations into this title along with what answers they have to the questions.  Since these sessions were held in Canada, a number of the specific examples are Canadian, but the answers are broadly applicable.

 

The book has ten chapters.  Some chapter looks at a particular topic - "Can you be Racist Against White People," "How Does Racism Relate to Other Forms of Oppression?," and "Can Members of an Oppressed Group be Oppressors?"  Other chapters focus more on personal involvement - "How Do We Fix Past Wrongs Without Creating New Ones?, "How Can I Talk About Social Justice Without Turning People off?, " or "What's the Difference Between Cultural Appreciation and Cultural Appropriation?"  There are also chapters on how to be antiracist and what exactly the "Race Card" is.  The authors finish with a list of principals for thinking about racial politics as a white person.

 

So if you are trying to figure out how to navigate this maelstrom of race and culture, take the time to read or listen to Frequently Asked White Questions.  The time will be well spent.