National Biographer's Day

Matthew Kerns
12 minutes ago
4 min read

I started typing this blog post and was a good paragraph in before it hit me—today is National Biographer’s Day, and somehow I almost forgot that I am a biographer. Not just someone who likes reading old newspaper clippings or writing about people who’ve been dead for over a century. No, I’m officially, technically, undeniably a biographer.

So Happy Biographer’s Day to… well, me, I guess.

If you’d like to help me celebrate, I humbly recommend picking up a copy of my book, Texas Jack: America’s First Cowboy Star. It’s the story of cowboy scout-turned-stage-hero Texas Jack Omohundro, his friendship with Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok, and his romance with Italian ballerina Giuseppina Morlacchi. Real bullets, real buffalo, real ballet slippers.

But I’m just one of many writers out there trying to wrestle truth from legend. If you’re interested in the real Wild West—not the one of B-movies and plastic spurs, but the actual people, places, and paradoxes that defined it—here are a few excellent biographies from authors I admire. These books are the kind of well-researched, beautifully written work that reminds me why I got into this in the first place.

Julia Bricklin

The Notorious Life of Ned Buntline

If you’ve read my stuff, you know I have a complicated relationship with Ned Buntline—like most people who’ve ever researched him. He was a murderer, a miscreant, a womanizing blowhard, and pretty much a walking disaster in pants, but he also wrote the novels and launched the stage careers of Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack. Julia Bricklin dives into the chaos and somehow finds the man in the middle of it. A fantastic biography of a fundamentally ridiculous human being.

America’s Best Female Sharpshooter: The Rise and Fall of Lillian Frances Smith

While everyone remembers Annie Oakley, very few people know the story of Lillian Smith—which is a real shame because while Annie Oakley was making a name for herself in Buffalo Bill's Wild West, Lillian was right there, shooting better than most and starting drama with the best of them. Bricklin brings her back into the spotlight where she belongs.

Robert Aquinas McNally

The Modoc War: A Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America's Gilded Age

A harrowing, necessary account of a war most Americans have never heard of, and one we should all understand better. McNally doesn’t flinch from the brutality, and that’s exactly what makes the book so important.

Cast Out of Eden: The Untold Story of John Muir, Indigenous Peoples, and the American Wilderness

This one’s close to my heart. It’s a reckoning, plain and simple. McNally examines the legacy of John Muir—not just as the “Father of the National Parks,” but as a man whose triumphs were built on lands already inhabited. There’s a line on the back cover I know pretty well:

“A thought-provoking masterpiece… shows how one of America’s greatest achievements—the preservation of our wildest places—is indelibly tied to one of our most abject failures—the treatment of the Native Americans who lived there.” That’s me. And I meant it.

**Cast Out of Eden: The Untold Story of John Muir, Indigenous Peoples, and the American Wilderness**

Steve Friesen

Galloping Gourmet: Eating and Drinking with Buffalo Bill

You want a different angle on the Wild West? How about through the dinner plate? Friesen, longtime curator of the Buffalo Bill Grave & Museum, serves up recipes, stories, and enough whiskey to float a Conestoga. Somehow it all works. A genuinely fun read.

Louis Warren

Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show

This is the book I kept reaching for while writing Texas Jack. Warren’s biography is big, brilliant, and still the most complete take on Cody ever written. It doesn’t shy away from contradictions—because neither did Buffalo Bill.

Joe Dobrow

Pioneers of Promotion

If you’ve never heard of John M. Burke, that’s okay—he was the guy behind the guy. Burke promoted Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack, and the idea of the West itself. Joe Dobrow’s book traces how Burke, P.T. Barnum, and a few savvy showmen basically invented modern PR.

Joseph G. Rosa

They Called Him Wild Bill

If you're only going to read one biography of Wild Bill Hickok, make it Rosa’s. This is the gold standard. Rosa strips away the legends and finds the man underneath—gunfighter, scout, gambler, and reluctant celebrity.