Dreamscape Desperado: Billy the Kid in Popular Culture

Why does Billy the Kid still haunt our imagination more than a century after his death? Celebrated historian Paul Andrew Hutton explores how the West’s most notorious outlaw became an enduring figure in books, films, art, television, and music, from author Walter Nobel Burns and composer Aaron Copland to movies such as The Left Handed Gun, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, and Young Guns. Drawing on decades of research and personal experience with the legend, Hutton reveals how Billy has been endlessly reinvented as rebel, romantic, and tragic hero—a figure who still rides across the dreamscape of American culture.

About Paul Andrew Hutton

Paul Andrew Hutton is an American cultural historian, author, documentary writer, and television personality. He is also Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of New Mexico Press, a former executive director of the Western History Association, and a past president of the Western Writers of America. His books include The Apache Wars and Phil Sheridan and His Army. He currently serves as interim curator of the Buffalo Bill Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, in Cody, Wyoming.