Although derided by some egghead professors as “Cowboys and Indians, 101,” the Western Americana field of history is, actually, remarkably rich and...
In Their Own Words
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Western Books
To Hell on a Fast Horse
Billing his book as a dual biography of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, Mark Gardner bails into the oft-told tale (there are more than a thousand...
Remembering a Western Literary Icon
Elmer Kelton leaves behind some big boots to fill. Well, he would have, had he worn boots. “I’ve got two glass ankles and flat feet,” he told me...
Brimstone
Robert B. Parker’s lawmen for hire, Everett Hitch and Virgil Cole, trail the troubled Allie French to the town of Brimstone in Parker’s Appaloosa...
Death Mask
Cotton Smith’s Death Mask follows a trail of ghostly revenge. After ex-Texas Ranger Tanneman Rose is jailed for bank robbery, he passes a death...
Hard Winter
Johnny D. Boggs’s Hard Winter has all the impact of that deadly winter of 1886-87 with its murderous cold, hellish gales and impassable drifts. But...
Shooting Stars of the Small Screen
Teacher and historian Douglas Brode has published studies such as Multiculturalism and the Mouse: Race and Sex in Disney Entertainment, as well as...
Illustrating Wounded Knee
The gorgeous, oversized and extra-extra illustrated Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: The Illustrated Edition is a new edition of Dee Brown’s...
Bad News for Outlaws
Escaping from slavery in 1838, Bass Reeves went on to become one of the most feared deputy U.S. marshals in the Indian Territory, living among the...
A Measure of Mercy
Lauraine Snelling’s A Measure of Mercy is set in the bleak immigrant country of Willa Cather and told with the drive of a Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman...
Following Isabella
I admire books where a writer uses another writer’s book as a guide to the territory, as Ivan Doig does with a 19th-century diary in Winter Brothers...
The Savage Breed
The Savage Breed unfolds with a rush in a time and place rarely visited by the average Western writer. Randy Denmon takes the reader down a...