Customer Reviews

America's last wild horses

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This is an excellent resource for anyone interested in wild horses and mustangs. The author does a great job of providing historical knowledge and facts about the early relationship between wild horses and men, and about how horses roamed America before they were reintroduced by Europeans. The author also discusses current issues involving mustangs and their future in the American West. This book is so good I definately needed it for my personal collection.

This book first came to my attention when I saw a review of it in Time Magazine, 1970(!), and then again in a National Geographic issue 1977.

My first copy (Ballantine Books, Inc. May 1973) became so dog-eared and worn, that I bought the revised edition (Lyons Press) as a gift to myself in Dec 2000.

Quite a remarkable book in it's history, coverage and research. The mustang has been much maligned by ranchers and the U.S. government as a nuisance and classified as "domestic strays," thus various methods have been used to round up these poor beasts (remember the film "The Misfits"?)and subject them to every kind of mistreatment imagineable, including death.

Thankfully, through the efforts of Ms Ryden and her book, and various animal protection agencies, we now recognize the important contribution and legacy that these horses have played in the history and settlement of the American west. They are the only living heritage and symbol of the history of the west, and as such, should be granted protection as an endangered species from all levels of government in the U.S.

A truly wonderful book. A must have for every horselover. Belongs with Ms Ryden's companion book "Wild Horses I Have Known" which features full colour, full page, never before published photographs not seen in her first book.

This book is written by a naturalist who does excellent field work! Her chapters on wild horse band behavior, and on the place of the horse in Native American life (and hearts), are my favorite, but every chapter contributes to the wealth of knowledge and research available to those of us who want to get a full picture.

It occurred to me that the information on the legislative efforts at various levels of government and on what was going on at BLM sites at the same time would take a great deal of research to pull together. Having read several other books on this subject, this is the most complete coverage I have encountered to date. Best of all, she was there! This is not completely secondhand information. It is possible that the new book by University of Arizona's J. Edward de Steiguer may be as thorough, but I have not purchased it yet.

It is truly unfortunate that competing interests, a lack of integrity in our government under all administrations to date, and long-held beliefs, based on facts or fiction, interfere with what should be the animals' return to the land of their species' origin.

I learned a lot about how the West was formed from this book. Hope has done some wonderful research on this topic. I agree with Hope about the US government's mistreatment of wild animals. They're disgusting and they're still spewing their false propaganda to get the naive American public to believe their falsehoods. However, Hope makes several extremely pro-Canada opinions which I disagree about. First of all, the Canadian government has allowed wild horse hunting to be legal, even today. There are only 200 wild horses left in Canada, compared to about 37,000 (BLM estimates - who knows how truthful they are) in the American wild. Canada treats its wild animals dastardly. Each year, hundreds of thousands of baby seals are slaughtered for their fur. Their bloody carcasses are strewn on the virgin white snow, a sad and tragic reminder of the callousness of the Canadian government to its wild animals. They're no better than the US government when it comes to wild animals and I think in some ways, the US government is better than their northern counterparts, especially over the last thirty odd years. Canada also has an ancient and very archaic domestic animal protection law. Last year, animal protection agencies worked to have a new, tougher law passed but it was defeated in Parliament.