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David Dary

Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries Paperback – March 20, 1989

by David Dary (Author)

22 ratings

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A nationwide bestseller—with more than 65,000 copies in print since publication by Alfred A. Knopf in 1981, this fascinating chronicle of cowboy life and legend is now available in a trade paperback edition. It's the 500-year saga of the "real cowboy"—from fifteenth-century Mexico to the twentieth-century American West.

Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Univ Pr of Kansas
Publication date

March 20, 1989
Dimensions

6 x 0.75 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0700603905
ISBN-13

978-0700603909
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Immensely readable. A classic is what I label it."—Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

From the Back Cover

Winner of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame Wrangler Award, the Western Writers of America Spur Award, and the Westerners International Best Nonfiction Book Award

"Immensely readable. A classic is what I label it."--Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Univ Pr of Kansas; Reprint edition (March 20, 1989)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0700603905
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0700603909
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.75 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,267,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #13,507 in Folklore (Books)
- #29,346 in U.S. State & Local History

Customer Reviews:
22 ratings

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Customer reviews

5 star		56%
4 star		34%
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1 star		9%

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D. Chandler

History lovers special

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2009

Verified Purchase

I bought this as a Valentine's Day present for my husband, after he got intrigued by Old West history while viewing the dvd collection of "Gunsmoke: the first season" which was also an Amazon purchase (Christmas present.) We are finding it to be well written and cohesive, with lots of fascinating details, and good quotes from primary (eyewitness) sources. So much of our self image as Americans is rooted in our ideas about the Old West. If you want to separate fact from fiction about this time and region of USA history you will enjoy this account.

8 people found this helpful

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SusieQuu

GREAT BOOK

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2013

Verified Purchase

Bought this for my son as a Christmas present, after seeing it mentioned in a museum annex at a visitors center in Texas. My son, always a great reader, has grown up to be part cowboy, I think, and this was right down his alley -- or trail perhaps. Not scholarly, but definitely informative. Lots of history, and lots of stories of cowboy life -- and culture. He loved the book! If he had saddlebags, it would be I there, for reading by the fire after the chores are done and the dogies are down for the night ...

One person found this helpful

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Jonathan E Romain

Cowboy Culture

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2013

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I liked True Tales of Old Time Kansas more than this book because it is quite long versus a bunch of short stories. If you want a detailed account of the history of Cowboys- you will want to read this book. Dary is a great author.

3 people found this helpful

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Joe Thorburn

cowboy history

Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2012

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Cowboy history is few and far between - this book is the most up-to-date and comprehensive history of the cowboy that has been in print for the past few decades - another recommendation would be We Pointed Them North - by Abbott and Smith

3 people found this helpful

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Lois Rambough

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2014

very good

Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2017

Verified Purchase

Informative about the cowboy culture

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Gary W. Chandler

A Must for Old West Historians

Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2014

Verified Purchase

Lots of history and telling of the development of the cowbouy life. A must for anyone interested in this period.

One person found this helpful

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Lynda Scheer

Thoroughly researched, vastly informative . . .

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2004

Currently there is no review here for this fine book, and it deserves one. For starters, the title for this well-researched history of 400 years of cattle raising in North America is not exactly right. It should be called "Cattle Culture," because cattle and not cowboys are at the center of the story the author tells. And his story traces their introduction to the New World by Columbus in 1494 through to the end of the open ranges in the American West in the late 1800s. Horses, also introduced by the Spanish, are no less a part of that story, along with the cattlemen who owned, bought, sold and sometimes stole cattle, and the horsemen (vaqueros, buckaroos, and cowboys) who worked the cattle.

Readers learn a great deal about cattle as a business, how the price of livestock fluctuated with demand and depended always on getting cattle to market, often many hundreds of difficult miles away. In some periods, the value of cattle was not in the beef on the hoof but in the hides and tallow. The California vaqueros, we learn, were not just herders but also expert slaughterers of cattle.

Not surprisingly, a great swath of Texas history is interwoven with the rising and falling fortunes of cattlemen, and the author puts together a detailed picture of the industry as it emerged there in the mid-19th century, foundered during the Civil War, and then flourished as the railheads worked west into Kansas. But the cattle drives from Texas to cow-towns like Abilene were only some of the many that the century witnessed, as herds were driven in various directions, sometimes by west-bound settlers on the Oregon Trail, or often to meet the sudden demand for beef wherever there were gold strikes. The author provides accounts of many of these, illustrated with maps.

There are many black and white period photographs in the book, which challenge the back-lot Hollywood imagery that readers are likely to have of the West. There are also informative illustrations, like that of the early western bridle called a jáquima by the Spanish-speaking vaqueros, later anglicized to "hackamore" by their American counterparts. The reader learns of many words flowing from Spanish into English, including "ranch," from the Spanish "rancho." The meanings of Spanish words like "hacienda" (a place where work is done) are also clarified. There are also illustrations of how to throw ropes in different ways to catch cattle and horses, how to dally a rope around a saddle horn, and the design of various kinds of barbed wire.

One chapter, "Bunkhouse Culture," is devoted to describing the fraternity of young men, mostly from the South, who came to be the Texas "cow-boys" that eventually emerged as the mythic figures on horseback that excited popular imagination. The author describes the unspoken "code" that bound them together and notes their quick passing from history as long-range drovers when barbed wire brought an end to the open range starting in the 1870s. About the same time, ranching as a corporate enterprise transformed the old conditions of loyalty between cowman and cowboy that characterized the earlier years. And so 400 years of history drew to a close.

At 300+ pages, plus another 50 of notes and an index, the book is not a quick page-turner. It reads instead like a very informative and often entertaining textbook on its subject, drawing heavily on contemporary accounts from diaries, journals, and newspapers. Doing so, it brings the past to life with people, personalities, and arresting incidents. I'm happy to recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the American West, the origins and development of the cattle industry, and the interplay between cattle, politics, economics, and social history.

25 people found this helpful

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