 | The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days by Andy Adams
Buy new: $9.35 / Used from: $1.68 Classic fictional account of 1882 Texas-to-Montana cattle drive, told in 1903 by a cowboy who wrote from first-hand experience.
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 | We Pointed Them North by E. C. Abbott
Buy new: $13.57 / Used from: $8.35 Classic as-told-to memoir of "Teddy Blue" Abbott about his early years cowboying in Nebraska and Montana in the 1870s-80s. Includes warm tributes to the Cheyenne and to the women of the cowtowns.
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 | Dakota Cowboy My Life in the Old Days (Bison Book) by I. Blasingame
Buy new: $12.71 / Used from: $5.94 Well-written memoir of a young cowboy working for the Matador Land and Cattle Company in the early 20th century on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.
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 | Wild Cow Tales by Ben K. Green
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $11.32 Reminiscences of a young Texas cowboy rounding up "uncooperative" cows in the 1920s and 30s. Easy-going, humorous style. Many working-cowboy insights into handling cattle in difficult situations.
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 | Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries by David Dary
Buy new: $14.95 / Used from: $3.93 An extensively researched history of the cattle industry in North America from 1494 to the end of the 19th century. Many period photographs and informative diagrams.
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 | The Negro Cowboys by Philip Durham
Buy new: $14.96 / Used from: $2.38 Well-researched account of the Wild West that repeoples the cattle trails and cowtowns with the thousands of blacks who worked as cowboys and in other walks of life -- forgotten, thanks to Hollywood.
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 | Cowboy Lingo by Ramon F. Adams
Buy new: $10.36 / Used from: $2.49 One of the author's entertaining books about the social life of cowboys on the range. This one focuses on cowboy-talk, terminology, and slang.
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 | Pulling Leather: Being the Early Recollections of a Cowboy on the Wyoming Range, 1884-1889 by Reuben B. Mullins
Buy new: $9.56 / Used from: $6.96 Informative and entertaining cowboy memoir of punching cows and becoming a top hand during the peak of the open rangeland cattle industry in 1880s Wyoming.
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 | Windbreak: A Woman Rancher on the Northern Plains by Linda M. Hasselstrom
Buy new: $14.95 / Used from: $1.34 A year-long journal of life on a small ranch near Rapid City, South Dakota. Captures the seasonal round of hard work and extremes of weather.
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 | Sketches from the Ranch: A Montana Memoir by Dan Aadland
Buy used from: $8.86 A collection of essays describing the writer's life on a ranch in Montana, where he raises cattle and trains walking horses.
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 | Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt
Buy used from: $0.01 Memoir of growing up on a ranch in the High Line country of northern Montana. Focuses on the difficulty of conforming to norms and expectations for women.
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 | Hole in the Sky: A Memoir by William Kittredge
Buy new: $14.35 / Used from: $2.91 A sometimes painful memoir of growing up on a huge family-corporation ranch in southern Oregon.
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 | In These Hills by Ralph Beer
Buy new: $14.95 / Used from: $0.28 Finely crafted short essays, rich with detail, wit, and humor, describing a life on a family ranch outside Helena, Montana.
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 | The Cowboy Kind by Darrell Arnold
Buy new: $13.50 / Used from: $2.10 Informative and enjoyable book about ranching, assembled from interviews with cowboys and ranchers. Many photographs.
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 | The Secret Life of Cowboys by Tom Groneberg
Buy used from: $0.01 Young writer, Chicago born, tells of his infatuation with the West, working as a dude ranch guide, a ranch hand, and manager of a 15-square-mile ranch near Miles City, Montana.
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 | Riding the White Horse Home: A Western Family Album by Teresa Jordan
Buy new: $10.40 / Used from: $2.00 Thoughtful and evocative memoir of growing up on a ranch in southeast Wyoming. A chapter on calving season brings to life the day-to-day labors and rewards of stock raising.
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 | A Collection of Cowboy Logic: A Look at the Lighter Side of Going Broke, Raising Cattle, and Living on the Prairie by Ryan M. Taylor
Buy new: $14.95 / Used from: $0.04 Wryly amusing collection of short essays about modern-day ranching, written by a North Dakota rancher.
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 | Horsing Around: Contemporary Cowboy Humor (Horsing Around)
Buy new: $17.95 / Used from: $9.12 Humorous short essays, fiction, and cartoons by ten cowboy-writers, folklorists and others covering a range of material from the comic mishaps of everyday ranch work to Pecos Bill-style tall tales.
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 | Panhandle Cowboy by John R. Erickson
Buy new: $19.46 / Used from: $7.95 Cowboy and writer John Erickson ("Hank the Cowdog") writes of his ranching experiences in Oklahoma and Texas in this first of a series of well-written, informative and entertaining books.
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 | All in the Day's Riding (James, Will, Tumbleweed Series.) by Will James
Buy new: $12.80 / Used from: $7.99 One of the many informative and enjoyable books by cowboy writer Will James (1892-1942). Descriptions of cowboy gear and horses, autobiographical essays, and short fiction.
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 | The Cowboy Way: Seasons of a Montana Ranch by David McCumber
Buy new: $11.90 / Used from: $1.69 Journalist McCumber spends a year on a large modern-day ranch in western Montana, and the reader learns along with him the day-by-day work of cowboying through seasons scorching hot and freezing cold.
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 | The Cowboy at Work: All About His Job and How He Does It by Fay E. Ward
Buy new: $16.47 / Used from: $10.79 A virtual desktop encyclopedia (1950s) of all things relating to cowboys. Full of detailed descriptions and drawings.
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 | The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing and Other Songs Cowboys Sing (Music in American Life)
Buy new: $35.00 / Used from: $9.78 For anyone who has read and wondered about the alleged bawdiness of cowboys, this book will remove all doubt. Of the 61 songs included, many are unexpurgated and unembarrassed evidence that cowboys had more than cattle drives and roundups on their minds.
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 | Cowboy: The Illustrated History by Richard W. Slatta
Buy used from: $7.22 In the crowd of books about cowboys, this one stands out for the well-researched photography. Here you will see classic photos from the late 19th century ranging right up to the present. Among the older photos it's refreshing to find many that have rarely, if ever, been published before.
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 | Cowboy Life: Reconstructing an American Myth
Buy new: $23.95 / Used from: $0.32 This is a collection of writings from the 19th and early 20th centuries about cowboys and cattle drives during the "Lonesome Dove" years after the Civil War. Many old-time photographs.
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| Buckaroos in Paradise: Cowboy Life in Northern Nevada (Bison Book) by Howard Marshall
Buy used from: $24.59 Informative catalogue book published for a Smithsonian exhibition in 1980-81. Its subject is ranchlife in Paradise Valley, Nevada. Many photographs.
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| The Last Cowboy by Jane Kramer
Buy used from: $0.74 Deromanticized account of a modern day cowboy down on his luck. Warts and all.
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| Texas Cowboys by Dane Coolidge
Buy new: $12.95 / Used from: $1.20 This book about Texas cowboys actually takes place in Arizona on Indian reservation land, where Coolidge spent some time with the Cherrycow outfit at the turn of the last century, taking photographs as a cover, he says, to gather material for his western novels.
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| Arizona Cowboys by Dane Coolidge
Buy used from: $3.50 This book about Arizona cowboys, first published in 1938, takes place in central Arizona, where Coolidge spent some time on the open range at the turn of the last century. The book concerns the cattlemen's struggles with sheepherders and includes 36 of Coolidge's photographs.
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