BS Summary: This article contains 6 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Framing Effect, and Indoctrination, with Representativeness Heuristic as the most egregious example at 36.5% saturation with 58 hits. Analysis detected 216 faulty-reasoning hits from 159 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 70.8% and a BS Rank of 78% (3,719 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 77.90% of the article peer group.
The Wild West has been the subject of much mythologizing in American culture.
But for all the fantasy, at least one figure was real: the gunfighter.
Well, real enough that there’s a fascinating history to discover about the time in America when men dueled with pistols.
It was the latter quarter of the 19th century, after the collapse of the Confederacy.
The place was Texas.
There was violence to the North and South, the Colt revolver was just catching on, and the cattle business was taking off, bringing with it all manner of rough and rowdy characters.
This is the era — as it really was — of “Wild Bill” Hickock, of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the encroachment of civilization.
[Rebroadcast]
GUEST
Bryan Burrough is a correspondent for Vanity Fair and editor at large for Texas Monthly.
His new book is The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the Wild West.
Analysis
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