13.9 million viewers tuned in to the Memorial Day premiere of the History Channel’s Hatfields and McCoys, with the war between the two families blazing to life on the small screen starring Kevin Costner as Devil Anse Hatfield and Bill Paxton as Randall McCoy. And the popularity of the three-part miniseries has made a book published 30 years ago into a current bestseller.
It wasn’t until the History Channel’s miniseries aired that The Hatfields and the McCoys, written by Otis K. Rice and published by the University Press of Kentucky, found success. The ebook is now on both Amazon’s and Barnes and Noble’s bestseller lists, thanks to Hatfields and McCoys‘ viewers desire for further information on the feuding families.
According to University Press of Kentucky, the book “draws upon an impressive array of court records, public documents, official correspondence, and other documentary evidence to present an account that frees, as much as possible, fact from fiction and event from legend.”
More on the Author:
Otis K. Rice (1919–2003) was professor emeritus of history at West Virginia University Institute of Technology. He was the recipient of many awards and was named West Virginia’s first Historian Laureate on July 22, 2003.
