1920s
A01=Joe Pappalardo
american history
Author_Joe Pappalardo
books for dad
Borger
Captain Frank Hamer
Category=NHK
corruption
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
father's day
northern Texas
oil fields
oil industry
old west
prohibition America
state history
Texas
Texas history
Texas Ranger
western history
Product details
- ISBN 9781250287564
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 174 x 245mm
- Publication Date: 18 May 2026
- Publisher: St Martin's Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Just a year after the town of Borger, Texas was founded, the press called it “the wickedest in the state' for good reason. The town, sprung into existence overnight to support the oilfields, had become a lawless haven for bootleggers, pimps and gamblers, run by a crooked city hall.
That environment attracts some of the most unsavoury characters in prohibition America, including a gang of murderous bank robbers who head into Borger to spend their money on booze, gambling, and prostitutes. In the span of weeks, the gang kills three law enforcement officers, bringing the worst heat imaginable: legendary Texas Ranger Captain Frank Hamer, who led the 1934 posse that tracked down and killed criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. His arrival threatens to break even this hardest boomtown in America. If it doesn't kill him first.
What follows is one of the most thrilling and violent untold stories from the era of gangsters, lawmen and vice. Author Joe Pappalardo brings to life a town previously lost in the haze of history.
JOE PAPPALARDO is the author of the critically acclaimed books Four Against the West: The True Saga of a Frontier Family That Reshaped the Nation-and Created a Legend; Red Sky Morning: The Epic True Story of Texas Ranger Company F, and more. Pappalardo is a freelance journalist and former associate editor of Air & Space Smithsonian magazine, a writing contributor to National Geographic magazine, a contributor to Texas Monthly, and a former senior editor at Popular Mechanics. He has appeared on C-Span, CNN, Fox News and television shows on the Science Channel and the History Channel.
