awes_'s review against another edition
4.0
This book is true to it’s title as it’s a very honest in its depiction of cowboy life on the trail. It’s filled with technical details of driving cattle over a long distance, which could be tedious for readers that don’t have a particular interest in the topic. Despite being fiction, it doesn’t really feel like it, with nothing being even vaguely hard to believe.
In fact, for a lot of the book nothing or any particular importance actually happens. From my understanding, this does reflect real life on the trails, with periods of tedium punctuated by bursts of activity such as river crossings or stampedes. The author gives a lot to detailed attention to these events; most river crossings span multiple pages, explaining exactly how the crossing points were found and the cattle divided and driven across. One of the stampedes amounts to 8 pages of rounding up cattle. This detail’s kind of the point of the book though, as it is supposed to more reflect the life of cowboys rather than glorify the vice.
Some remarks regarding certain races are very uncomfortable, but they do unfortunately reflect the opinions of certain peoples at the time. The book was written in 1902 and is set not long after the civil war. Some important characters themselves fought for the confederacy, and there’s clear stigma against black people and Native Americans. This is all in accordance to history though, and I think it’s important to recognise the ugly truth of these views being the norm once.
In fact, for a lot of the book nothing or any particular importance actually happens. From my understanding, this does reflect real life on the trails, with periods of tedium punctuated by bursts of activity such as river crossings or stampedes. The author gives a lot to detailed attention to these events; most river crossings span multiple pages, explaining exactly how the crossing points were found and the cattle divided and driven across. One of the stampedes amounts to 8 pages of rounding up cattle. This detail’s kind of the point of the book though, as it is supposed to more reflect the life of cowboys rather than glorify the vice.
Some remarks regarding certain races are very uncomfortable, but they do unfortunately reflect the opinions of certain peoples at the time. The book was written in 1902 and is set not long after the civil war. Some important characters themselves fought for the confederacy, and there’s clear stigma against black people and Native Americans. This is all in accordance to history though, and I think it’s important to recognise the ugly truth of these views being the norm once.
jmeston's review against another edition
5.0
I'm going to finally mark this as read even though I haven't gotten to the last bit. I started reading this aloud to my daughters. My oldest was very interested in the life on the trail, cattle wrangling, etc. It's the best cowboy era book I've read (or very nearly finished).
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