34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best of this genre, April 8, 1998
This book is a lot of fun to read, taking the reader back in time to a late-1800s cattle drive from Texas to Montana. The book is written well with spare prose, wit and exceptional details about a cowboy's often difficult and sometimes boring life on the trail. There's refreshingly little of the syrup found in so many western stories. It's written simply enough for pre-teens interested in the west, yet it will yield a lot of enjoyment for the seasoned reader.
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29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One for the "Lonesome Dove" bookshelf, August 20, 2003
Andy Adams was a prolific writer, and thanks to the University of Nebraska Press, some of this former cowboy's output is still in print. This true-to-life story of an 1882 cattle drive is his best known, and its retelling 100 years later in Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" is evidence of its importance among early works of Western fiction.
Here the protagonist is a young cowboy much like the author, who trailed beef from Texas to Montana at a time just after the buffalo herds were being extinguished from the short grass prairies and homesteading had not yet fenced in the high plains. Oklahoma was still "Indian Territory," Little Big Horn was a recent memory, and Native Americans were in the last shameful stages of being forced off the open rangeland. The railroads were snaking across the land making frontier boom towns where law and order either prevailed (Dodge) or more often did not (Ogallala), and the vast cattle herds of Texas and Mexico finally had a market and access to it.
Adams was born into this world and as a young man cowboyed during the height of the cattle drive era. His book is an account of one trek, delivering 3,000 head of cattle to the Blackfoot Agency in northern Montana. For the protagonist, the initial excitement wears off once the daily routine is established, and besides the occasional stampede and wet weather, the highlights of the journey are brief visits to the cowtowns they pass along the way and the many river crossings, some of which pose enormous difficulties.
We get to know all the men in the outfit by name, and a few stand out, including Flood the foreman, McCann the cook, and the protagonist's trail mate The Rebel, who is older and wiser and something of a mentor. Other personalities emerge, primarily around the campfire on nights when the men get to swapping stories. And Adams passes on a lot of first-hand knowledge about trailing cattle, riding horses, and the day-to-day operation of a drive. Days and nights of the routine are punctuated by episodes of another kind: a rigged horse race, in which the cowboys lose several hundred dollars in wagers, two saloon shootings, the breakdown of the chuck wagon, pulling cattle out of a boggy river, meeting potentially hostile Indians, an encounter with cattle thieves, and a long drive across a waterless expanse of Wyoming.
Reproduced from the original edition published in 1903, the text has an old fashioned look and feel that suit the subject matter and the prose style well. There are also five illustrations. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed "Lonesome Dove." Adams captures the excitement and the reality of the old West before it was romanticized and mythologized by the movies and popular fiction. As companion volumes, I would recommend Ramon Adams' "Cowboy Lingo" and "Come an' Get It," which provide much informative background on open range cowboying. With a good road atlas at hand, you're also able to follow the track of the drive across six western states, from Brownsville to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truer than Lonsesome Dove and just as good!, December 30, 2003
I have found this to be one of the best western books ever written. Written 100 years ago it has the feel of life in the late 1800s not glossed or romanticized.
If you're interested in this book take a look also at the website westwardho dot us. Although they don't intend to print fiction, they are thinking about making an exception for this terrific title. Why?
The folks at westwardho say, "Log of a cowboy is so near to truth that it is hard to call it fiction. It certainly is more true to life than some of the news articles written in the recent past!"
I appreciate much of the modern miracles we take for granted - internet, mobile (cellular) phones, satellite TV and the ability to produce tremendous, special-effects driven movies. Still, I wonder if we are missing something in all our instant self-gratification lifestyle...
Don't get me wrong, I am not one to call the old days the good days. We not only have more luxury today, we also have more opportunity and greater political and intellectual freedom. I am merely trying to point out that many of us fail to seize opportunity and fail to recognize the value of our more primitive instincts.
Read THE LOG OF A COWBOY and see if you don't also wonder. Then also try finding a copy of Africa's equal, MEMORIES OF A GAME RANGER. If you also will peruse my ABOUT Me profile at Amazon's book reviews and you'll find a few more gems you probably never heard of but that you will thoroughly enjoy - Bill Anderson.
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