As one of America’s best contemporary authors of history, Austin-based Bryan Burrough is used to hyper focusing on specific groups in his work. They might be powerful oil men ( The Big Rich ), early gangsters ( Public Enemies ), or 1960s/’70s government protesting “radicals” ( Days of Rage ).

But it was his last book, the myth-busting Forget the Alamo (co-authored with Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford) that led him to his most current side trip in the same universe: The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild (448 pp., $35, Penguin Press ). Burrough will have a talk and signing locally on June 6 at Brazos Bookstore.

The Old West gunfighter has become one of the most archetypal images of America both in this country and abroad. And the Lone Star State was such fertile kill

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