Cowboy Culture - by David Dary (Paperback)

About the Book

The 500-year saga of the "real cowboy"--from fifteenth century Mexico to the twentieth century American West.

Book Synopsis

A nationwide bestseller--with more than 65,000 copies in print since publication by Alfred A. Knopf in 1981, this fascinating chronicle of cowboy life and legend is now available in a trade paperback edition. It's the 500-year saga of the "real cowboy"--from fifteenth-century Mexico to the twentieth-century American West.

Review Quotes

"Drawing on diaries, journals, letters, maps, and pictures, Dary tells the unvarnished truth about cowboys and analyzes the cultural force of the cowboy myth."--New York times Book Review

"Comprehensive and entertaining. . . . Full of wry anecdotes. . . . Dary understands the double legacy of the real West--hard fact and rich myth--and he savors it."--Time

"The definitive treatment of the cowboy. . . . Impressive in its thoroughness, scope, and depth. Anyone interested in the history, sociology, and economics of the West will find it valuable and fascinating."--San Diego Union

"Evocative reading. . . . A kind of source book for all the Westerns you've ever seen and are ever likely to see. . . . Between the lines, Cowboy Culture offers the germ of a story idea on almost every page."--Los Angeles Times

"Fun and enriching, packed with original research, it gives us a better understanding of that part of our past we have always worshiped. More that that, it gives us an idea of what we have lost."--Chicago Sun-Times

"An exuberant book, bubbling over with tales, stories, and recollections. If one were going to buy a single book on the cowboy and his life and business, this ought to be it."--South Dakota History

"Immensely readable. A classic is what I label it."--Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee