These women, many teenagers themselves, often faced unruly children. You have to admire the pluck of these frontier women. Working with wit, quick...
Making the Grade
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Western Books & Movies
Social Class in the Writings
A popular writer of the early 1900s, Foote would gain fame much later, in 1979, when Mary Ellen Williams-Walsh exposed Wallace Stegner’s liberal...
Angel & the Badman Remake
As unlikely as it seems, a remake of the very terrific John Wayne Oater, Angel and the Badman, is due out in 2009, starring Lou Diamond Phillips...
No Country For Old Men
Watching No Country For Old Men once again, this time as a DVD, only serves to remind me how thoroughly terrific Joel & Ethan Coen are at mixing...
Circle The Wagons!
An interesting book, Circle the Wagons! is a deliberately controversial one, combining early Western movies with actual events in an effort to...
Agnes Lake Hickok
In this first biography of Agnes Lake, the woman finally steps out of the shadows of her famous husband Wild Bill Hickok. Working through Agnes’s...
The Life and Legend of Hugh O’Brian
Hugh O’Brian is Wyatt Earp. By that I mean that in talking with O’Brian, one gets the sense that the actor is in many ways as contradictory as the...
The Dark Border (Fiction)
Legendary penman Frank Bonham sold more than 50 novels during his 54-year-career. This Western Quartet demonstrates his superb writing. ‘“Brand of...
North Star (Fiction)
An aura of depression suggests this might be the last chapter in the “Barnaby Skye” mountain man series as Skye submits to old age. The fur trade is...
Cowboy Park (Nonfiction)
At the turn of the 20th century, cattlemen’s associations voiced opposition to steer roping because of injuries to expensive cattle. Texas, New...
Family Ranch: Land, Children, and Tradition in the American West (Nonfiction)
As activists used to say: the personal is political, and so it is with modern family ranching in the West. These stories of six ranching families...
Mormonism’s Last Colonizer (Nonfiction)
The author, a descendant of Mormon leader William H. Smart, by his own admission, gives an honest and detailed account of the ardent leader. Through...