Real Dirt on America's Frontier Outlaws

The rebels and bandits of the American West--like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid--have always made for thrilling tales of gunfights, heists, and outlaws. From the beginning, penny dreadfuls, Wild West shows, dime novels, and urban legends romanticized and magnified these renegades and their wild American spirits. These tales, however, don't capture the truth of the West's outlaws--nor do we hear about other lawless individuals, such as Pearl Hart, Belle Starr, or the Bloody Espinosas. Jim Motavalli returns with The Real Dirt on America's Frontier Outlaws to give a real and more inclusive look at the old West and the dangerous figures that immortalized it.

Jim Motavalli writes for the New York Times, CBS MoneyWatch, NPR's Car Talk, AOL, Mother Nature Network and TheDailyGreen.com (Hearst). He is author or editor of multiple books, including Forward Drive: The Race to Build Clean Cars for the Future and Naked in the Woods: Joseph Knowles and the Legacy of Frontier Fakery. Motavalli is a two-time winner of the Global Media Award from the Population Institute, and hosts a radio program on WPKN-FM in Connecticut, with frequent live music. He lives in Fairfield, Connecticut.