Latest posts
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Cowboys: The Myth, the History, and the Novels in Between
The cowboy is the most successful fiction the United States ever produced — so successful that most people cannot tell where the history ends and the…
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The Invention of the Western: Owen Wister and the Birth of a Genre
Every genre has a founding document, a single book in which the conventions that will harden into formula are first assembled and made to seem inevitable.…
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Max Brand: The Poet Who Mass-Produced the Mythic West
The man whose name was Max Brand did not exist, and the man who wrote under it wanted to be remembered for something else entirely. Frederick Schiller…
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Zane Grey and Riders of the Purple Sage: The Novel That Fixed the Western
Close your eyes and picture a Western. The lone rider on the ridge, dressed in black, gun low on the hip. The vast sweep of red rock and sagebrush. The…
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B. M. Bower: The Woman Who Wrote the West Behind a Man’s Initials
Near the close of Chip, of the Flying U — the 1904 novel that launched B. M. Bower’s career and a series that would feed her for thirty years — a cowboy…
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The Classic Western Novels Worth Reading
What are the best classic Western novels?