Legends of the Old West - BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

Here is the official announcement of Chris’s book — “Summer of 1876: Outlaws, Lawmen, and Legends In The Season That Defined The American West.” It will be released June 13, 2023, from St. Martin’s Press, but PRE ORDERS available now! Use the link below to reserve your copy today… https://read.macmillan.com/lp/summer-of-1876/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, I have a very special update here and I've been waiting a long time for this one. I think a good number of you know that I've been writing a book for the past two years, but I've never given any detail about it. I know at least one very industrious listener who follows us on Twitter has already found a link online to buy it. I won't mention her name, but well done to her. She did some digging and discovered the book on her own. For everyone who hasn't done some online sleuthing, it's time for the official announcement. The book is called Summer of 1876, Outlaws, Lawmen, and Legends in the Season that Defined the American West. It's a non-fiction book that comes straight out of the Legends of the Old West podcast.

It's published by a major publisher, St. Martin's Press, which is a division of Macmillan, one of the biggest publishers in America. Everyone at St. Martin's has been great, and I'm working with lots of different people right now to roll out the launch of the book. It's still a ways away, and I'll get to that in a second, but here's the quick version of the book. It chronicles the huge overlapping stories that all happened in a three-month period in the summer of 1876. So you're going to get the story of Custer, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson on patrol in Dodge City together for the first time. The rise of Deadwood as an outlaw mining camp. Wild Bill Hickok's final journey to that very camp and his fateful ending.

Jesse James and the James Younger Gang's notoriously disastrous Northfield Raid, and the manhunt that followed. And the first season of play for the first professional baseball league to stand the test of time, the National League. All those stories overlapped in 1876, and many of them peaked in that crazy summer. Plus, you'll hear about the first World's Fair that happened on American soil, the story of Calamity Jane, the story of a famous one-on-one fight featuring Buffalo Bill Cody, and a lot more. So you get Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson,

Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, Calamity Jane, and Jesse James, all in the same book. Plus, a supporting cast of characters with names you'll recognize, and some of the early stars of baseball. It's intentionally written to be fun, fast, and entertaining. It's not going to be some 900-page encyclopedia. It's a lean narrative that weaves all of those stories together. So that's what the book is about, and here's how you can get it if you're interested. First, it gets released on June 13th, 2023. That's a ways away, I know, but as I've learned, it takes a long time to put a book together. But even though the release date is a few months away,

you can pre-order the book right now if you want to. If you do, it'll get shipped on the day it releases, June 13th, next year. The release date is timed to coincide with Father's Day, so hopefully the book will make a nice gift. If you want to pre-order it, you can just look in the written summary of this episode and you'll see an internet link that will take you to a page that has lots of links to buy. It's available at pretty much every major bookseller. Or that same link is on all of our social media pages. And our web designer is working on an update for our website right now, so it'll be part of blackbarrelmedia.com very soon. We've already had a couple requests for signed copies, and thank you very much for that. And I'm working with the publisher right now to

figure out the best way to make that work. I'll have more information about signed copies down the road. Lastly, thank you all for listening. The book absolutely would not have been possible without your interest in these podcasts, Legends of the Old West and Infamous America. I'll be back in a couple months with more updates, and next time I'll have a fun story to tell you. Hopefully this is the only update that is purely dry and informational. Next time, I'll tell you about a successful author who wrote a famous book

that was made into a really famous movie and his fight with the New York Times bestseller list. Thanks again. I'll talk to you soon.