Jeff Smith's article on Soapy Smith in Wild West magazine

WILD WEST MAGAZINE
April 2013
On sale now!

he April 2013 issue of Wild West magazine is on sale now at larger bookstores near you. This is the issue that published my article Soapy Smith's Showdown with the Vigilantes (page 44-51). This is a condensed version of the research explored in my book Alias Soapy Smith: The Life and Death of a Scoundrel. I am very pleased with the layout the magazine used for it. See the entire article online HERE.

      Starting on page 1, the contents page, readers are greeted with a half-page photograph of Soapy at his bar inside Jeff Smith's Parlor. Page 4 is designated as the Editor's Letter (Gregory Lalire) and this issues letter title is Soapy Smith Was the Most Famous Con Man On the Frontier, But Was He Significant? The first half of editor Lalire's letter is devoted to my views of Soapy and the second half explores author Cathy Spudes beliefs that Soapy was little more than a "petty criminal." Lalire adds my counter in her section of the letter that she "ignored solid facts he [I] provided, and that many of her interpretations miss the mark."
      See Gregory Lalire's complete Editor's Letter HERE.  
      An added pleasure in this issue is the Wild West review of Cathy Spude's new book "That Fiend in Hell:" Soapy Smith in Legend. Although it is a review of Spude's book my book is actually the main topic. Best of all is the last sentences.

"It was clear," Spude writes, "that more than one man had been involved in bringing Smith to his end, just as many more than one would be involved in creating a legend out of the death of a petty confidence man." Author Smith would no doubt argue that's like calling Jesse James a petty train robber.

See the review of Cathy Spude's book HERE.

Anyone wishing to purchase a copy of this magazine issue may do so HERE.

 

"It was clear," Spude writes, "that more than one man had been involved in bringing Smith to his end, just as many more than one would be involved in creating a legend out of the death of a petty confidence man." Author [Jeff] Smith would no doubt argue that's like calling Jesse James a petty train robber. 

—Gregory Lalire
Wild West magazine editor

FEBRUARY 13

1635: The first public school building in the United States, the Boston Public Latin School, is established.
1741: The American Magazine, the first magazine in the U.S., is published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1862: Jeff Pelkey is the first known white person born in Hellgate, Montana Territory.
1866: Outlaws Frank James, Cole, Bob, and Jim Younger and possibly Jesse James, hold up their 1st bank in Liberty, Missouri. $60,000 is said to have been taken. The Liberty raid is also the first daylight bank robbery in the U.S. by an organized band of robbers. (The first U.S. bank robbery was committed by lone postal employee Edward W. Green, who held up a bank in Malden, Massachusetts, on December 15, 1863).
1875: Mrs. Edna Kanouse gives birth to the first quintuplets in the United States. All five of the baby boys pass away within two weeks.
1879: The first passenger train arrives in New Mexico Territory.
1880: Thomas Edison observes what became known as the Edison Effect for the first time.
1889: Norman Coleman becomes the first U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.