The life of William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, who was among the most famous Americans in the world in the late 19th century, is the topic of a free public talk Oct. 25 at the University of Colorado at Boulder by guest historian Louis Warren.
Warren will discuss his book, "Buffalo Bill's America" at 7 p.m. in the Old Main Chapel on the CU-Boulder campus. Warren is a professor of history at the University of California, Davis.
Warren's presentation will explore the life of Buffalo Bill, including the sources of his legend and how his purposeful and fantastically popular entangling of history and myth illuminate the politics and culture of the United States after the Civil War.
Born in 1846, Cody grew up as a child of the Great Plains frontier and became renowned as a Pony Express rider, trapper, Civil War soldier, professional buffalo hunter, Indian fighter, cavalry scout, horseman, dime-novel hero and actor. His greatest success was as impresario of "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" show, which toured North America and Europe for more than three decades. He died in 1917.
Warren's book is a biography and social history that examines Cody's genuine achievements, his many self-inventions, and the manner in which he successfully combined the two. Although Cody exaggerated his accomplishments, he was a genuine hunter and fighter as well as an intuitive performance genius, according to Warren.
"Louis Warren's superb book gives us an entwined portrait of William F. Cody, the person, of Buffalo Bill, the persona he and others created, and of the culture in which man and myth operated," said Stephen Aron, author of "How The West Was Lost."
Warren is also the author of "The Hunter's Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century America," which won the Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Book in 1998, given by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Museum.
Warren's presentation is sponsored by the CU-Boulder Center of the American West. For more information visit