The American cowboy has long been a popular figure in fiction, motion pictures, and studies of the West, but over the years inaccuracies have distorted the image of the "real" cowboy. Philip Ashton Rollins sets out to provide a complete, accurate handbook on the everyday life of the cowboy - trailing, herding, branding, round-up and horsebreaking. He also discusses tools of the trade, including types of saddles, bits, riatas, boots and spurs. Most vivid is his presentation of the cowboy's personality, code, mores and amusements. The new paperback edition is a reprint of the 1936 edition. In a new foreword, Richard W. Slatta discusses Rollins's life and compares modern histories of the cowboy with Rollins's classic volume.
Philip Ashton Rollins participated in two cattle drives as a teenager and spent six months on the Cheyenne Indians' Dakota reservation. Educated as a lawyer in the East, he regularly returned to visit and study the West firsthand. He is the author of several books on cowboys and the West, including Jinglebob: A True Story of a Real Cowboy and Gone Haywire: Two Tenderfoots on the Montana Cattle Range in 1886.