From nuggets of sage advice--"Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction"--to campfire fare, Morris presents the truth about America's most enduring and intriguing "life-style". Features lists of the best rodeos, dude ranches, trail rides, and festivals. 67 photos. 51 line drawings.
Rattlesnakes and ornery horses, the dreaded Texas Itch, midnight rambles in graveyards, trips to Mexico, and hard riding on the last open range: George Philip recounts all these adventures and more with wit and humour. George Phillip arrived in South Dakota from Scotland in 1899. For the next four years, he rode as a cowboy for his uncle's L-7 cattle outfit during the heyday of the last open range. But the cowboy era was a brief one, and in 1903 Philip turned in his string of horses and hung up his saddle to enter law school in Michigan. In these candid letters, Philip provides fascinating insights into the development of the West and of South Dakota. His writing details the cowboy's day-to-day work, from branding and roping to navigating across the palins by stars and buttes, as the great open ranges slowly closed up.
Readers recognize the cowboy as a symbol of the Wild West, but this book illustrates what life was like for real cowboys. Readers will learn about the Spanish origins of cowboys, as well as the rise of America’s cattle industry. This book also describes cattle drives and the famous trails ridden by real cowboys. Vivid visuals are paired with engaging text to deliver an adventurous reading experience. This high-interest book is supplemented by sidebars and “Truth or Myth?” fact boxes to deepen the reader’s understanding of this iconic figure in the Wild West.
"I've known about Ike Blasingame all my life, knew many of his fellow punchers, white and Indian. Ike was certainly a salty representative of the Texas bronc twister when he came North with that most romantic of cow outfits, the British-owned Matador. . . . [He] takes the reader across the treacherous Missouri River as the spring-softened ice goes out under the horses' feet, into the still wild cow towns, through the round-ups, the prairie fires. . . . There is the authentic smell and feel of the Northern cow country of fifty years ago in the story Ike Blasingame tells."-Mari Sandoz"Here is one of the most gripping Western tales since Andy Adams' The Log of a Cowboy was published in 1903. The telling is considerably like Adams'-warm, human, flavorful. The author, a one-time Matador ranch cowboy, . . . lived his story, and he tells it straight in the language of the cow country without contrivance."-New York Times"Many of the cowboys who have written about their experiences never really looked at any wider segment of the cattle business than was visible between their horses' ears, but Ike Blasingame did. He paints a big picture without omitting details."-New York Herald-Tribune
Based on research conducted for the Canadian Museum of Civilization exhibition Legends of Our Times: Native Ranching and Rodeo Life on the Plains and Plateaus, this volume describes the many aspects of Native cowboy culture, including the spiritual and cultural dimensions, ranching life, and rodeo and associated entertainment. Abundantly illustrated with superb historical and contemporary photographs. Distributed by University of Washington Press. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
“The best all-around study of the American cowboy ever written. Every page crackles with keen analysis and vivid prose about the Old West. A must-read!” —Douglas Brinkley, The New York Times–bestselling author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America The open-range cattle era lasted barely a quarter century, but it left America irrevocably changed. Cattle Kingdom reveals how the West rose and fell, and how its legacy defines us today. The tale takes us from dust-choked cattle drives to the unlikely splendors of boomtowns like Abilene, Kansas, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. We meet a diverse cast, from cowboy Teddy Blue to failed rancher and future president Teddy Roosevelt. This is a revolutionary new appraisal of the Old West and the America it made. “Cattle Kingdom is the smartly told account of rampant capitalism making its home—however destructive and decidedly unromantic—on the range. . . . [A] fresh and winning perspective.” —The Dallas Morning News “Knowlton writes well about all the fun stuff: trail drives, rambunctious cow towns, gunfights and range wars . . . [He] enlists all of these tropes in support of an intriguing thesis: that the romance of the Old West arose upon the swelling surface of a giant economic bubble . . . Cattle Kingdom is The Great Plains by way of The Big Short.” —Wall Street Journal “Knowlton deftly balances close-ups and bird’s-eye views. We learn countless details . . . More important, we learn why the story played out as it did.” —The New York Times Book Review “The best one-volume history of the legendary era of the cowboy and cattle empires in thirty years.” —True West “Vastly informative.” —Library Journal “Absorbing.” —Publishers Weekly
Revised to include presidential hats, new celebrity hats, and a fully updated resource listing of custom hatters. The Cowboy Hat Book features an impressive array of cowboy hats, showcasing the wide variety of styles, colors, and fabrics used to create the cowboy hat, now a symbol of America and western culture that is recognized all over the world. Beginning with a brief history of the cowboy hat, the authors go on to explain the building of the perfect hat, its care and feeding, hat etiquette, hat hair, and more. Beautiful photos of real cowboys and movie cowboys sporting their trademark hats illustrate how creases, brims, shapes, and trims are unique to the individual who wears each hat. The Cowboy Hat Book celebrates the history and importance of this unique piece of clothing that hasn't fundamentally changed in more than 100 years. Ritch Rand's family has been making handcrafted hats for over twenty years. His hats have rested on dozen's of famous heads-from presidents to kings and heads of state to movie stars. He lives in Billings, Montana. William Reynolds is president and CEO of the marketing, PR, and advertising agency Banning Company, Inc. The company has a special division that services the western and equine industries. He lives in Malibu, California.