The Last Gunfight

This myth-busting account of the most famous gunfight in American history reveals the truth about Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the shootout itself.

On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, in a vacant lot in Tombstone, Arizona, a confrontation between eight armed men erupted in a deadly shootout. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral would shape how future generations came to view the Old West. Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the Clantons became the stuff of legends, symbolic of a frontier populated by good guys in white hats and villains in black ones. It’s a colorful story—but the truth is even better.

In The Last Gunfight, historian Jeff Guinn draws on archival research as well as new material from private collections, including diaries, letters, and Wyatt Earp’s own hand-drawn sketch of the shootout’s conclusion. Digging beneath popular lore, Guinn delivers a startlingly different and far more fascinating picture of what actually happened that day in Tombstone—and why.

“The most thorough account of the gunfight and its circumstances ever published.” —The Wall Street Journal