The Cowboy Kind

When people think of cowboys, they envision wide-open spaces, camping under the stars, and flashy horseback riding. In reality, cowboying is plain hard work. Ranching men and women tend cattle through winter blizzards and under desert suns, roping, herding, calving, feeding, doctoring, and more. They suffer through hard times and broken bones because they love their work, not because they are waiting to ride off into the sunset. For twenty years, Darrell Arnold traveled the United States, from Lebanon, Tennessee, to Pie Town, New Mexico, capturing on film and audiotape the day-to-day lives of cowboys and ranchers. Arnold organizes the 125 black-and-white photographs and 170 quotes by such western themes as horses, neighbors, ranch economics, saddlemaking, and family life. The Cowboy Kind separates myth from reality, letting the words and photos of ranch people reveal the heart and soul of contemporary cowboy life. As veteran actor and horseman Richard Farnsworth says in the foreword, even "with America now in the computer age...the cowboy still endures."