Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History

The first famous American to erase the boundary between real history and entertainment.A century ago, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show enthralled millions of spectators in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Billboards everywhere made William Cody, the show’s originator and star, a world-r [...]
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The first famous American to erase the boundary between real history and entertainment.A century ago, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show enthralled millions of spectators in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Billboards everywhere made William Cody, the show’s originator and star, a world-renowned figure. Joy S. Kasson’s important book shows how Cody’s image was shaped. Publicity stressed his show’s "authenticity," yet audiences thrilled to its melodrama; fact and fiction converged in a performance that instantly became part of American tradition. Joy S. Kasson, author of several books on American history, is Professor of American Studies and English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She lives in Chapel Hill.