| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 32.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the WHQ online. About 223 words from this article are provided below; about 476 words remain.

If you are a individual subscriber to the Western Historical Quarterly, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the Western Historical Quarterly, you can:: • subscribe here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Western Historical Quarterly (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Western Historical Quarterly.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 32.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Cowboy Way: An Exploration of History and Culture. Edited by Paul H. Carlson. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2000. xii + 236 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)

Few readers of The Cowboy Way will be surprised that real cowboys of the late-nineteenth century differed markedly from their twentieth-century mythical counterparts, but they may learn much about the nature and extent of that difference. Sixteen largely engaging essays assembled by editor Paul Carlson cover a variety of topics related to lives and cultural legacy of the nineteenth-century cowboy. 1

The lead-off essays by Carlson and James Wagner establish that most cowboys were itinerant teenage boys who, as distinguished from the more permanently employed and expert cowhands or the ranch owners, occupied the lowest rung of wage-earning livestock laborers and were often derided as shiftless and thieving--hardly the paragons of heroic individualism idealized in wild west shows, dime novels, and movies. Jorge Iber, Douglas Hales, and Thomas Britten make clear that cowboys were also an ethnically diverse lot. According to Iber, "perhaps one-third of all cowboys involved in the trail drives after the Civil War were either African-American, hispanic . . . or Native Americans" (p. 22). Even English nobility could be found among Texas ranchers, as documented by Jim Fenton's account of the Earl of Aylesford. . . .

There are about 476 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.