Before he was known as "Wild Bill,” famed frontiersman and gunfighter James Butler Hickok spent three formative years as a young man in the Kansas City area – a period of his life little known to the public. Years later he would return as a national media star and living legend.

Drawing from his new book The Wanderer: James Butler Hickok and the American West, author and historian Craig Crease spotlights both important periods in the life of this American icon and separates the man from the myth. As he writes in the biography, "No one who met James Butler Hickok and his alter ego Wild Bill will ever forget him, and neither will the reader."

Crease is an investigative historian and award-winning writer on the historic frontier trails and the American West. His historical research and articles have appeared in many publications including The Kansas City Star, The Kansas Anthropologist, Wagon Tracks, and Overland Journal.

This presentation is a special Saturday installment of the Library’s ongoing Missouri Valley Sundays speaker series.