Walter Noble Burns and the Myth of Billy the Kid Brainpower & Brownbags lecture series

Author Mark Dworkin speaks on "Walter Noble Burns and the Myth of Billy the Kid," at noon on Thursday, April 7 in the John Gaw Meem Room, 105 Washington Ave. (Enter via the museum's Washington entrance.) This Brainpower & Brownbags lecture is free and open to the public. 

Dworkin is a free-lance writer, editor, history educator, and book critic who lives in Toronto. His special interest is in American Old West history, as it relates to lawmen and crime. Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, the history of Tombstone, Arizona, and the 'Gunfight at the O. K. Corral. He is currently involved in several projects related to upgrade this area of history, formerly dominated by popularizers and buffs, and bringing it to a standard of professional history.

In 1926, journalist-historian Burns' book The Saga of Billy the Kid ignited a fascination with the Old West outlaw that burns today.  Almost a morality tale for the end of the Old West, Burns' book was, despite meticulous research that included interviews with survivors of the Lincoln County War, denounced by some of those same survivors. A myth, however, was born, and the Billy the Kid legend lives today.