Hidalgo and Other Stories

by Frank T. Hopkins, David Dary, Basha O'Reilly

It started as a search for heroes. It became a hunt for the most elusive equestrian charlatan of all time. If Frank Hopkins is to be believed, he led one of the most exciting, challenging and colorful (albeit unrecorded) lives in the late nineteenth century. No one rode more miles, eluded more danger, or befriended more famous people than he did. During the 1930s and 40s the self-proclaimed legend told a naïve American public that he had won nearly five hundred endurance races, including an imaginary race across Arabia on a mythical mustang named "Hidalgo." Hopkins' remarkable career supposedly began when he became a dispatch rider for the US government on his twelfth birthday in 1877. According to his mythology, this Renaissance Man of the Old West went on to work as a buffalo hunter, Indian fighter, African explorer, endurance racer, trick rider, bounty hunter, Rough Rider, big game guide, secret agent, Pinkerton detective and star of the Wild West show. Experts beg to differ. This book contains an unprecedented study, undertaken by more than seventy experts in five countries, ranging from the Curator of the Buffalo Bill Museum to the former Sultan of Yemen. These academics investigated the historical improbability of Hopkins' claims and weighed him on his merit, not his myth. The resulting exhaustive study revealed that Hopkins had maintained a spirited disregard for the truth, plagiarized material from famous authors, slandered genuine American heroes and perpetrated a massive fraud for nearly one hundred years. Far from being the star of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show for 32 years, for example, the counterfeit cowboy was discovered working as a subway tunnel digger in Philadelphia and a horse-handler for Ringling Brothers Circus. It is his endurance racing pretensions, however, that have brought Hopkins his greatest notoriety and made him the hero of a Hollywood movie. Yet there is not even a documented photograph of Frank Hopkins in the saddle! Here then are all the known writings of Frank T. Hopkins, published in their entirety for the first time in history.

Genres: Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Terry Cornell]

A fast read--and a little hard to categorize. I chose fiction instead of historical fiction. This edition of Frank T. Hopkins writings was published by The Long Riders' Guild Press after the movie 'Hidalgo' came out. This Disney movie claimed at the beginning that it was 'based on a true story', and the publishers had a group of international experts evaluate the accuracy of Hopkins. The book is a collection of all his known material including footnotes by various experts about the inaccuracies of his tales. Occasionally throughout the book there will be a brief bio on a famous person contributed by the editors after they are mentioned by Hopkins.

I enjoyed the movie, and was also disappointed to find out that is just one of many tall tales Hopkins told. The book is repetitive, because each chapter is one of his stories, some cover the same material--such as his life experiences growing up on the plains, or his supposed career in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Other chapters deal with his ideas on horse training. I found the footnotes, and mini bios the most interesting part of the book. The only true things we know about the real Hopkins is that he worked for Ringling Brothers Circus as a horse handler in 1917, and in 1926 was a construction foreman working on digging a subway tunnel in Philadelphia.

A more entertaining read of accurate historical fiction of this period is Thomas Berger's 'Little Big Man'.

[Shane]

It's terribly depressing to learn that Frank T. Hopkins(Viggo Mortensen's character from the "True" movie Hidalgo) is a complete fraud. This book is a collections of letters and reminiscences by Frank T. Hopkins and is heavily annotated by 70 historians from 5 different countries. So far, all the annotations simply state how said assertion could not possibly be true. It was a story I really wanted to be true. The saddest part, even the race that Hidalgo centers around does not exist.

[Molly]

DNF

[Paul]

Depressing read...with every footnote describing lies.

[Benji Cossa]

It was fun and sad at the same time. I really believed this to be a great American heroic tale after watching the movie. Yes, I expected there to be embellishments and fictitious elements, but what a whollop of a lie! The accounts in this book are comedic in the fact that they read as such fantasy from a guy who seems neither smart nor happy.

[Rachel]

SO disappointing! The whole reason I read this book was to read Hidalgo's story, and it ended up being 3 paragraphs! Also, I don't think Frank Hopkins was a very good author. He didn't do very well on excitement. And he needed to get his facts straight. Obviously, this story isn't true, but he at least need to try to keep everything straight.

[Abdulgader Algibani]

isn't a bad story, it's just not a very good one