Four Against the West
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€22.99
19th century
19th century texas
A01=Joe Pappalardo
american dream
american frontier
american history
american myths
american west
Author_Joe Pappalardo
bean brothers
books for dad
Category=DNBH
Category=NHK
Category=WQH
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
forthcoming
hanging judge
history buffs
manifest destiny
old west
old west outlaws
only law west of the pecos
shaping of america
texan history
texas lore
western history
Product details
- ISBN 9781250892911
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 135 x 208mm
- Publication Date: 18 May 2026
- Publisher: St Martin's Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Roy Bean was an American saloon-keeper and Justice of the Peace in Texas, who called himself 'The Only Law West of the Pecos'. He and his three brothers set out from Kentucky in the mid 1840s, heading into the American frontier to find their fortunes. Their lifetimes of triumphs, tragedies, laurels and scandals will play out on the battlefields of Mexico, in shady dealings in California city halls, inside eccentric saloon courtrooms of Texas, and along the blood-soaked Santa Fe Trail from Missouri to New Mexico. They will kill men, and murder will likewise stalk them.
The Beans chase their American dreams as the nation reinvents itself as a coast-to-coast powerhouse, only to be tested by the Civil War. During their saga, the brothers become soldiers, judges, husbands, guerillas, lawmen, entrepreneurs, refugees, fathers, politicians, pioneers and – in Judge Roy Bean’s case – one of the Old West’s best known but least understood scoundrels.
Using new information gleaned from exhaustive research, Joe Pappalardo's Four Against the West is an unprecedented and vivid telling of the intertwined stories of all four Bean brothers, exploring for the first time how their relentless ambitions helped create a new America.
JOE PAPPALARDO is the author of the critically acclaimed books Red Sky Morning: The Epic True Story of Texas Ranger Company F; Inferno: The True Story of a B-17 Gunner's Heroism and the Bloodiest Military Campaign in Aviation History; Sunflowers: The Secret History and Spaceport Earth: The Reinvention of Spaceflight. 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.
