Red Dead Redemption 2 became the center of a lawsuit between Rockstar and the Pinkerton Detective Agency. It sounds a little wild, but the Pinkertons didn’t like the idea that they were accurately being portrayed as the villains in the game. Rockstar said the game was historically accurate in countering this claim, and the lawsuit went away.
This humorous tale leads us to Tore Olsson’s book. Olsson is a history professor at the University of Tennessee. In this book, he goes through and gives some context for the parts of Red Dead Redemption II and explains their historical equivalent.
There is a lot in this book. I don’t want to do a complete summary because it would be way too long. Instead, I’ll go through my favorite parts of the book.
This was a hard book to put down, and I loved the idea of examining how historically accurate a video game is. A few of the parts I want to discuss include Appalachia, the depiction of the Cowboy, and the Pinkertons. There are many other fascinating topics in this book, but those are the three I want to discuss.
Myth and Reality
Red Dead’s History does an excellent job of presenting the origins of myths and explaining what was happening then. While focusing on the 1890s, Olsson also explains the origins of things and how they changed in the 1900s. This book discusses a number of topics, and I don’t have time to go over all of them, so I’ll stick with the few I found the most interesting.
I wanted to discuss two things here. This is based on chapters about Cowboys and Appalachia. What I like about them is how Olsson explains the origins of the myths and stereotypes and then the reality of how things were.
Similar things happen in other sections, but these two most stuck out to me. I think it has to do with how the myths about the Cowboys and the Appalachian region were created in the media and were propagated over the years. This is something I love to read about, mostly because of what I used to do with analyzing media trends.
Olsson does an excellent job of explaining how these myths were created. I found it fascinating to learn about the Cowboy strikes, how the railroads impacted their lives, and how the media helped to propagate the myths about them. This does tie into the Pinkertons and the other strikebreakers.
In many ways, this is a socio-economic study of the US. Much of the explanation of how things were in the 1890s relates back to economics and exploiting a region’s resources. The section on Appalachia is closer to this than the Cowboy section.
With Appalachia, Olsson points out how Red Dead Redemption II presented the region’s reality in the 1890s and the myth about the region that was created around the same time. While it seemed he was critiquing this, I saw it differently. I saw the developer of taking how the media portrays Appalachia and contrasting it with reality.
This doesn’t match what Olsson is doing in his book, but I was coming at this as a former media analyst and not a historian. Olsson’s argument is correct that the myth isn’t historically accurate when looking at the reality of the region. I would counter that it was accurate, as the myth is part of history. It is how people outside of the region viewed Appalachia at the time and going forward as a stereotype.
This gets into the tricky history of what bias you take with you as you analyze the primary sources. History can be messy as there are different perspectives on what happened, and it can be fun to present all of them. I think Rockstar was doing that with this part of the game.
The last thing I want to discuss is Olsson’s explanation of the Hatfield and McCoy feud. Like in other parts of the book, Olsson focuses on economics and how they relate to the conflict. This was a perspective I hadn’t heard before, and it made a lot of sense. I loved the way he explained this.
These two sections were my favorite parts of the book. I love how he covered the history of these two myths and explained the reality of what was going on at the time. I like this type of history, and I enjoyed the way Olsson told it.
A Story about the Pinkertons
I have an odd story about the Pinkertons. It isn’t as strange as what happened with the organization in recent memory. When I left the CIA, I applied to the Pinkertons. They didn’t want a former open source officer/collection manager/ senior watch officer in their ranks. I thought that was a little odd.
Anyway, Olsson gives us a lengthy explanation of the agency. He covers how they got their start and how the agency tarnished its reputation in the latter part of the 1800s. While they started as a private detective agency greatly promoted by the organization’s founder, they became strikebreakers for robber barons.
I found the company’s origins fascinating. It is very interesting to see how the company changed when the founder died and his sons took over. It is clear that they didn’t have the same ability to promote their “good” things as Pinkerton.
The current version of the Pinkerton Detective Agency doesn’t like it when their history is accurately portrayed. I can understand why they would run away from their less-than-favorable past, but the problem with getting upset about it is that they already have a tarnished reputation. It was a funny anecdote in the book.
Final Thoughts
This is the best book I read in 2024. It is also a book that snuck up on me. I love the idea of checking the historical accuracy of a video game. It’s awesome.
This might not be your book if you were looking for more information on the games. It is light on what happens in the video games, as Olsson uses the second game to discuss parts of US History. I enjoyed it, but this might not be for everyone, especially if you’ve made up your mind about what happened in the post-Civil War United States.
I would recommend this book to everyone. It is more than simply a book about a video game. Olsson’s book takes a claim that the game is historically accurate and tests it against what was going on at the time the game is set.
I guess I should come to some conclusion. I think Red Dead Redemption II is more historically accurate than some games. It takes some liberties as it tries to remain a fun game, but it is more accurate than other forms of media that cover this era.
Looking at media like this can be so much fun. We all bring some kind of bias with us when we engage with media, and this is something Olsson explains in this book. It can be hard to know what those biases are and attempt to set them aside. I might not be doing a great job of this, but I believe that Olsson compellingly explains things in this book.
If you liked this blog post, please check out my Creating Q*bert and Animal Crossing posts.