Buffalo Bill follows William F. Cody from frontier work and service as an army scout to the creation of the travelling spectacle that made him a global celebrity. It examines how hunting, military campaigning and dime-novel publicity were transformed into a marketable personal legend.
The biography centres on Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, which employed Native performers, cowboys, soldiers and sharpshooters to stage a dramatic version of recent history. It considers Cody’s business successes and failures and the show’s lasting influence on popular images of the American frontier.
