Cows and horses were part of daily life in my family. For many years of my youth, my father was a working cowboy, running the cattle ranch on a large agricultural operation. We also had our own herd and trained horses as well. While we watched the popular TV Westerns of the time, we were always aware that they had no connection to the reality of cowboy life, and that “cowboy” was a term misused and abused on the screen and in the pages of shoot-’em-up Western novels. Authenticity and a sense of the reality of cowboy life are important to me, and have been since boyhood.
Max Evans knows cowboy life and he writes about it authentically. In The Rounders, we laugh along with Dusty and Wrangler as they do battle with one of literature’s best horses, “Old Fooler.” The boys break horses, hunt for cows in rough country, rodeo, drink, and chase the girls—and it’s all in good fun.
The bawdy and moving story of two contemporary bronco busters, The Rounders, originally published in 1960, was Max Evans's first novel and is still his best known work, thanks largely to the success of the 1965 movie version starring Henry Fonda and Glenn Ford. Acclaimed for its realistic depiction of modern cowboying and for its humor, it is also a very serious work, described by the author as a tragicomedy.
I was a horse-crazy young girl whose passion for equines went dormant for 30 years. It reawakened when I turned 40, and I was again a lovelorn teenager, daydreaming about horses, plotting treks, swooning over the mere sight of an equine, even if it was online. One day in the late 90s at the dawn of the Google search engine, I happened upon a picture of a beauty, a dark horse with a thick mane blowing in the wind. It was an Icelandic horse, the photo taken on a misty green tussock in Iceland. That was it for me. I focused my equine passion (fair to call it an obsession) to that horse and that country.
The title just made me laugh. Wade introduces herself and her co-partner in her adventures, Penelope Langley, as middle-aged women who refuse to surrender to age, and exhort themselves and others to reclaim their “yeehaw”—that feeling of freedom, wildness, that one we last had at the age of twelve. In this collection of short tales, her answer to the age-old problem of aging is a call to gallop. We follow her all very relatable equestrian pursuits through all her foibles and fun. A scene where she watches as Penelope makes friends with the most questionable character—why? because he owns horses—made me spit out my coffee. Hence the title of her book explained, they are horse sluts because they will do anything to pimp a ride.
Wade is honest about the challenges of riding as you start to get older. She is both fearful and fearless. She worries about hurting herself…
A swelling number of horse riders aren't nubile nymphs and don't start riding as toddlers. Horse Sluts - The Saga of Two Women on the Trail of Their Yeehaw winks at mid-life riders who relate to the feeling "when memories of who we were and what we used to do smash at our egos like bugs on a windshield." Candace Wade and Penelope Langley wrote Horse Sluts to give those riders a leg up on recapturing the yeehaw of youth. "It's how to stand up to fears, how to challenge ourselves. Horse Sluts is for women who refuse to surrender…
I’m a writer fascinated by landscape and history—and the American West is my magnet. I’ve set three books in the West. I can’t get enough of the place. An entire national myth is enshrined “where the deer and the antelope play.” Independence. Freedom from the past. Land we can supposedly call our own. The West is so beautiful and also so scarred. I love to read books that deepen my experience of the deserts, mountains, and rivers. I also love to learn about the people who were here before me, those who have hung on, and those who hope to heal the scars. These books are great stories about a bewitching place.
Annie Proulx is a genius with character, and she’s obsessed with how hard humans work to uphold their myths of identity and achievement even when the odds are stacked against them. Close Range is the best of her three very good story collections about the West. It’s famous, and rightly so, for the trail-blazing tale of cowboy queerness "Brokeback Mountain". But each story is taut with observation and image. “The Mud Below,” “The Half-Skinned Steer”—there’s more than one American classic in this book. Some Westerners aren’t fans of Proulx, but I am. She doesn’t pull her punches about what it’s really like to ranch, rodeo, fantasize about retirement, or care for family in a place with no safety net, extreme weather, and no neighbors around the corner.
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning and bestselling author of The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes comes one of the most celebrated short story collections of our time.
Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below," a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer," an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home. In "Brokeback Mountain," the…
I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and have always been fascinated by the Wild West. Native Americans, cowboys, rodeos, settlers, farmers, and the great National Parks of the West. I’ve been fortunate to see Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Glacier National Park, and many western national monuments. My first elementary school was Sequoyah, named for the great Cherokee who created the Cherokee alphabet. While researching early library methods of transportation, I came across books being delivered by stagecoach in the west. That eventually led me to discover the amazing life of Jackson Sundown. I hope these books on cowboys, buckaroos, and rodeos enchant you and your little ones like they have me.
What a terrific book to learn about the cowboy’s way of life! All things related to the western lifestyle are described. There is detailed information from A-to-Z, plus a short poem using each letter for younger readers and listeners. Examples are chuck wagon, lariat, and rodeo. I think this book is so informative with its focus on western culture and western history.
"L is for lariat or lasso, a loop of rope coiled just so. Swing it wide or swing it low. Hook those horns and yell whoa!" Hold on to your hat and strap on your spurs! Cowpokes and buckaroos of all ages will enjoy this A-Z gallop through the facts, feats, and folks of the cowboy way of life. Even greenhorns are invited to ride this fun-filled range!
I grew up around ranch and rodeo life, having always been fascinated by it, attended several rodeos each year. Watching Jonnie Jonckowski ride bulls and Martha Josey break records wining barrel races—they were an inspiration. When an opportunity arose for me to build a career around researching and writing about cowgirls, rodeo, and cattlewomen, it was a dream come true. Hope you enjoy the books about them that I’ve recommended.
Cowgirls evoke a variety of images: Wild West show shootist, rodeo athletes, working ranch women, and pin-ups. Many stories, dime novels, and a plethora of fiction about the cowgirl confuse her true history and are in many ways responsible for why we have so many interpretations of her. In The Cowgirls, Joyce Gibson Roach unravels the folklore to give us the history of the cowgirl, the good, and the “lady rustlers,” to explain her longevity as heroic cattlewomen who hold our attention and fascination even today. Roach’s narrative is as entertaining as it is informative and is a history any fan of the cowgirl should read.
An important chapter in the history and folklore of the West is how women on the cattle frontier took their place as equal partners with men. The cowboy may be our most authentic folk hero, but the cowgirl is right on his heels. This Spur Award winning book fills a void in the history of the cowgirl.
While Susan B. Anthony and her hoop-skirted friends were declaring that females too were created equal, Sally Skull was already riding and roping and marking cattle with her Circle S brand on the frontier of Texas. Wearing rawhide bloomers and riding astride, she…
This
book has everything a scifi adventure needs: spaceships, black holes,
exoplanets, and androids. Also, well-developed characters facing personal demons
as friends become foes and enemies become allies.
The story contains little
gems. I loved the aptitude test for new officers – so believable (and delightful,)
I wonder if it happened on some real-life military ship. When I was about to
head out for an appointment, I read faster and faster.
Could I finish the story
before I had to leave? Well, maybe being five minutes late wasn't so bad. Ah! Satisfying ending.
A weapon of unimaginable power. A desperate mission to the center of the galaxy. Mankind's fate hangs in the balance.
Captain Thomas Holbrook has agonized over the thought of someday drawing a one-way mission. When he receives orders to divert his CentCom warship to the center of the galaxy, a region from which no vessel has ever returned, he comes face-to-face with his greatest fear.
It’s the year 2330. The “aughts,” robots that warred for independence from mankind, seek insurance against the ever-present human threat. An aught ship speeds to the galactic center for material to build a weapon that…
I’ve been traveling since age seventeen when I boarded a plane and headed to Europe on my own. Over the next three years I lived in London, took weekend jaunts across the continent, and became completely bitten by the travel bug. Since then, I’ve traveled to more than 95 countries. I’ve lost and gained friends and lovers and made a radical career change so that I could afford my travel addiction. Like my readers, I am an ordinary person. Through travel I’ve learned courage and risk-taking and succeeded at things I didn’t know I could do. My goal in writing is to inspire others to take off and explore the world.
This book of essays are meditations on her life in Wyoming. Part travelogue, part memoir, it drew me in with its gorgeous language, evocative images, and insights into a landscape and lifestyle about which I knew nothing.
Erlich is a filmmaker, and her descriptions of people and places are as vivid as any I’ve ever seen on film or read in any book.
A collection of transcendent, lyrical essays on life in the American West, the classic companion to Gretel Ehrlich's new book, Unsolaced
"Wyoming has found its Whitman." -Annie Dillard
Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make the first in a series of documentaries when her partner died. Ehrlich stayed on and found she couldn't leave. The Solace of Open Spaces is a chronicle of her first years on "the planet of Wyoming," a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life.
Ehrlich captures both the otherworldly beauty and cruelty of the natural…
I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and have always been fascinated by the Wild West. Native Americans, cowboys, rodeos, settlers, farmers, and the great National Parks of the West. I’ve been fortunate to see Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Glacier National Park, and many western national monuments. My first elementary school was Sequoyah, named for the great Cherokee who created the Cherokee alphabet. While researching early library methods of transportation, I came across books being delivered by stagecoach in the west. That eventually led me to discover the amazing life of Jackson Sundown. I hope these books on cowboys, buckaroos, and rodeos enchant you and your little ones like they have me.
Just looking at the colorful illustrations in this book make me want to look at it again and again. When Bo, the armadillo, mistakes a red cowboy boot for an armadillo friend, chaos happens. With his poor eyesight, Bo follows that ‘red armadillo’ to the Curly H ranch for some rodeo time shenanigans. He gets bucked off a horse, eats a fiery jalapeno pepper, is kicked up on the dance floor. After he discovers his red friend is not an armadillo, he heads back with his ma, knowing he can find more fun at the Curly H, whenever he gets bored!
When Bo spots what he thinks is a "rip-roarin', rootin'-tootin', shiny red armadillo," he knows what he has to do. Follow that armadillo! Bo leaves his mother and three brothers behind and takes off for a two-stepping, bronco-bucking adventure. Jan Brett turns her considerable talents toward the Texas countryside in this amusing story of an armadillo on his own.
I grew up around ranch and rodeo life, having always been fascinated by it, attended several rodeos each year. Watching Jonnie Jonckowski ride bulls and Martha Josey break records wining barrel races—they were an inspiration. When an opportunity arose for me to build a career around researching and writing about cowgirls, rodeo, and cattlewomen, it was a dream come true. Hope you enjoy the books about them that I’ve recommended.
This book is fun! A rare autobiography of one of early rodeo’s star athletes, Vera McGinnis tells her story as a non-ranching woman who began a career in rodeo riding broncs and relay racing. This book reads like an action film with an early twentieth-century style of prose. We get bronc rides, relay wrecks, barns even stowaway rides on trains asVera breaks into rodeo life. Through her firsthand account, readers are introduced to the rodeo “family.” Vera tells of the physical setbacks that rodeo contestants faced, the personal sacrifices cowgirls made to keep rodeoing, and perhaps most enlightening is the almost addictive lure of rodeo that resulted in cowgirls prioritizing it in their life.
The first woman to travel the rodeo and wild-west-show circuits records her twenty-year career when she successfully competed with the male riders for championships, trophies, prize money, and broken bones
I grew up around ranch and rodeo life, having always been fascinated by it, attended several rodeos each year. Watching Jonnie Jonckowski ride bulls and Martha Josey break records wining barrel races—they were an inspiration. When an opportunity arose for me to build a career around researching and writing about cowgirls, rodeo, and cattlewomen, it was a dream come true. Hope you enjoy the books about them that I’ve recommended.
This book is a must-read for any fan of cowgirls, rodeo, or female athletes. LeCompte’s history of cowgirls whom she identifies as “America’s first successful professional women athletes” is one of excitiment equivalanet to live competition. Through the description of early rodeo when women competed with men, performed for presidents and royalty as well as for crowds in the thousands we learn of their athletic talent, their personal sacrifice, and determination to pursue their own careers. They became stars and sometimes won annual earnings that surpassed the men. This thoroughly researched history describes women in rodeo from the mid-1800s to 1992 when Charmayne James Rodman and Scamper set a new world record for earnings in a single event. This book is as exciting as any professional sport.
Acclaimed as a foundational study of rodeo women, Cowgirls of the Rodeosurveys the early rodeo cowgirls' achievements as professional athletes. Mary Lou LeCompte follows the story through the near-demise of women's rodeo events during World War II and the phenomenal success of the Women's Professional Rodeo Association in regaining lost ground for rodeo cowgirls. Recalling an extraordinary chapter in women's history and the history of American sport, Cowgirls of the Rodeo deepens our understanding of the challenges facing women in the American West and in American sport.
