Then and Now The state of Western history and fiction publishing in 2024 is one of grit and determination. In 2013, I received a call from my friend...
Best of the West 2025: Western Books
read more
Western Books
Legends of the West
In the annals of North American history, the fabled lore of the horse and the mountain man are two of the most chronicled and beloved. From...
California Dreaming
Two new books about the rise of Los Angeles and Hollywood, plus an overlooked story of slavery in Nebraska, a Western detective novel, the real and...
Tale of Two Cities
Two new mining town histories, plus a Ford film trilogy history, a biography of Buffalo Bill, Lincoln’s spies and a conman for the ages. The history...
Tucson Book Festival
On Saturday morning, March 9, 2024, the sun rose over Tucson, Arizona, after two days of overcast skies and rain. Fifteen years since the first...
Grit and Grace
Across the past 150 years of Western American history scholarship, dozens of authors have been inspired to research and write about mining in the...
The Shadow Catcher
Larry Peterson’s extraordinary new biography of Edward S. Curtis, plus two new classic Westerns, a Pony Express travel adventure and a history of a...
The Man, The Myth, The Meal
A culinary biography of Buffalo Bill, plus a new bio of Newton Earp, a range-war Western, a classic rediscovered and a dramatic debut Old West...
The Tenacity of the West—and the Western
A year ago, I asked the question: “Will the Western survive?” I was concerned, and rightfully so, with the anti-Western sentiment of many if not...
Voice of the West
A remembrance of Larry McMurtry, a new history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a wild Western tale, Apache boarding schools and a new collection...
Big Sky Dreaming
Thomas Minckler’s masterpiece, plus a biography of Patton, a Western love story, a guide to guns and a grand collection of Western short stories....
Brave and True
Just in time for great summer reading, Tom Clavin’s latest Western history, Follow Me to Hell: McNelly’s Texas Rangers and the Rise of Frontier...