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timmens59's review against another edition
3.0
(If I could, I'd give this 3 1/2 stars) I have to hand it to Adams in that he details just about everything going on during a incredibly long and dangerous cattle drive in which in the end, they actually had more heads than they started with. These cowboys were that good. Adams conversational writing style puts you on the trail as he describes the West beautifully. But it's also dangerous as the cowboys chase after the stampeding cattle and have to make split-second decisions in trying to head them off, and then having to round up strays, all with little sleep. It's amazing when you learn what a cowboy is thinking on the trail. It's intense. But you learn all this within the first 200 pages or so of the book, so the rest -- 187 pages -- is repetitive with another river crossing, another round of stories at the nightly campfire, another stampede, and so on. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed this book, up to around page 200. I just think a good editor and publisher back then should have had a long talk with Adams about tightening the draft. One other thing. In this day and age, it's still somewhat shocking to some of us to be reading along and suddenly out of the blue comes the n-word. It stopped me. Adams uses it to name one of his horses and uses it when describing Black men. He doesn't call anyone the n-word, he uses it as a descriptor. I know the history of the word and know that it was more common back then for it to be loosely said. I bet Adams would argue that he meant no harm; it's what he learned growing up. Anyway, I'm not saying it should be edited out, like those folks who removed all the n-words in an edition of Huck Finn. It's authentic of its time, which Adams captures in an important addition to our Western canon.
mwinterstone's review against another edition
4.0
Really fun story about the life of a cowboy. Highly recommend to Edward Abbey fans.
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