Cowboys

The Old West #1

by William H. Forbis, Douglas W. Gorsline

An account of the lives and work of cowboys in the old West, lavishly illustrated with contemporary paintings and photographs.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Westerns, American History, Historical, Cultural

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1973

Reviews

[Mothman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got this from my local library and found it super entertaining and informative. Lots of old photos and drawings/paintings I've never seen before. The text is also funny at times.

[Pat Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished reading the last of my collection of Time / Life's 'Old West' series in this book. I saved this one and "The Gunfighters" for last thinking they would be the most fun reads. The Gunfighters was up there, but this one was middling. Not to say it was bad. These Time Life books were all very good. They give a reader a lot of history (the way it was seen in the seventies). Good writing and well researched subject matter. This book covered the time of the cowboy which was from about 1855 to the early 1890's. Then it told of the process of getting cattle from wherever they grew up to the meat industry processors and sellers. That is a cattle drive which is interesting. They wrote of the equipment and clothing of the usual cowboy. The chuckwagon coverage was interesting. It even had an exploded view of an actual chuckwagon and all its mechanisms. The image of the cowboy and all the gunslinging is explained. There evidently were some wild times where cowboys come into the end town of the drive and whoop it up. But the gunfight and quickdraw action was downplayed in the last few pages where they explained that it was rare when the gunfights occurred. The violence in these histories was generally swift and final. Lynchings of horse rustlers and cattle thieves was not uncommon, but not widespread. Anyway, I enjoyed the book. I am glad I finished the whole collection (The ones I own) and I can concentrate on some other reading material.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published back in the 1970s, The Cowboys focuses on these cattlemen. With the westward expansion and rise of the cattle/beef industry, cowboys were in demand. Not to be masculine and rugged warriors, but herders and employees who looked after the prized cattle. These cowboys often were young & overworked in their long duties of tending to the animals and traveling with them through the vast terrains to sell them. Despite this, the image of the cowboy became an icon of amazement to the public in the late 19th century that sparked and lead to the ways cowboys are often portrayed in many romanticized versions of the Old West.

This book was a surprise for me, as my knowledge of cowboys is fairly limited to mostly how old western shows tend to portray them. Which is pretty much explained in this book how that idealized identity of the cowboy came to be. I learned that the life of a cowboy tended to be tedious, gritty, intense, and occasionally secluded. And also how the origins of the cowboy came from Spanish riders who colonized the west prior. Fairly informative and rich in details about certain aspects of cowboys, I do feel like I learned a lot about them. It makes it kind of a shame that cowboys are often more glamorized in popular culture than showing that they are hard workers trying to make a living. Truly, the cowboy is part of the iconic image of America as he himself was part of an important era where America began to shape itself into the modern world.

[Neil Crowle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forbis gave an excellent account of the real cowboys of the western United States from the time after the Civil War until the start of the Twentieth Century. He went into great detail about their work (maybe a little too much sometimes) and their lives. He also shed a lot of light on the rise of the mythology associated with the cowboy and the Old West and so kept good historical perspective.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite Time Life series! I have read this installment twice.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, with wonderful old west history, and just about everything you could want to know, about, "The Cowboy"!

[Bone2Pick · Rating 3 out of 5]

~3 Stars~

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet one more in the Time-Life "Old West" series. . . . Here, the focus is cowboys. As the work says at the outset, outlining context for what is to follow (Page 17): "The high time of the American cowboy lasted a bare generation, from the end of the Civil War until the mid-1880s, when bad weather, poor range management and disastrous cattle-market prices forced an end to the old freewheeling ways."

The book begins with a gritty examination of everyday life for the cowboy. Life was often difficult. The chapter also considers "the uniform of the range," from headgear to pants, to spurs. Too, the land itself is considered in the opening chapter. The many photos in this chapter help give the reader a sense of the land. Chapter 2 looks at "The Cattle Barons." Examples of the players include Charlie Goodnight, whose career is described in some detail. Other barons are depicted on pages 58-59; 6 baronesses (including Charlie Goodnight's wife). Chapter 3 looks at where the cowboys lived--from homes of the barons to shacks to bunkhouses. . . . A nice touch: recipes used in the West (see page 87). Other chapters consider roundups, the trail, beef boom towns (e.g., Dodge City, Newton, Hays City, and Abilene), and the code of the west.

All in all, a solid representative in this series. Pluses include photographs (including a nice one of Wild Bill Hickok on page 202), a gritty sense of reality rather than romanticization. Sometimes, coverage is a bit thin on certain subjects, but the book covers a lot of territory and that is almost inevitable.

[spike marlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised with this book. Recently I purchase the whole series of The Old West for a very good price and this was the first book in the series that I have read. I was pleasantly surprised because I didn’t know a whole lot about cowboys and the cowboy culture durning the American expansion and consolidation of the western frontier. This book opened my eyes to the hardships that the cowboys faced while working, the long and hard cattle drives, the dangers, and the tools of their trade. I was surprised that this culture only lasted about 25 years, from after the US civil war to the mid 1880’s. While cowboy culture existed after that this appears to be the Golden Age. A great read.

[♥judy♥ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very informative read...

[Amy]

This is a great book filled with interesting facts.