Western Gunslingers: The Truth Behind the Westerns (Zoom)
Winter (9 - 13.5 hours) | Registration opens 11/24/2025 12:00 AM EST
The course consists of eight PowerPoint lectures on the life and times of gunslingers who lived in the American West in the late 19th century and are well-known in American popular culture. They are broken up into two series: Four seminars on the “Good Guys” and another four on the “Bad Guys.”
The American West has been portrayed extensively in westerns and other media and subjected, on the one hand, to broad exaggeration, and, on the other, to a more recent tendency to uninformed debunking. The intent is to present the unvarnished truth as far as it can be ascertained from historical records.
The Good Guys series addresses the following figures:
- Wild Bill Hickok
- Wyatt Earp
- Buffalo Bill Cody
- Annie Oakley
The Bad Guys series addresses the following:
- Jesse James
- Billy the Kid
- Belle Starr
- Butch Cassidy
This course will be presented in a lecture format.
Daniel Seligman
Daniel Seligman is a retired computer engineer with a lifelong interest in the American West. Over the years he has indulged his interests in extensive readings and travels and, since retirement, in publication of scholarly articles and presentation of seminars on western historical figures. In the recent past, he has delivered the lecture series, both in person and via Zoom, to audiences in other OLLI programs, in Massachusetts town senior centers, and via local cable TV.