Books » Rodeos Books

To the fan, the rodeo cowboy is the distinctly American embodiment of the romantic Old West. But to the young men who live the profession, the realities are modest pay, continuous travel, and the constant threat of injury. While he was the Denver bureau chief of the New York Times, Dirk Johnson spent a year on the professional rodeo circuit with cowboys, watching them try to hang on to bucking horses and Brahma bulls-and to wives and livelihoods that seemed only one fall away from disappearing. Biting the Dust covers the circuit's biggest events in Denver, the capital of the New West, to small towns on the Great Plains like McCook, Nebraska, where rodeo continues to thrive even as the population shrinks. Johnson takes the reader beyond sentimental visions of the rodeo cowboy and the American West and provides an unforgettable and authentic story of the rodeo today.

Dirk Johnson is the Chicago bureau chief for Newsweek magazine and a five-time winner of the New York Times Publisher's Award.

This inside looks at the early glory days of hold'em, playing in smoky backrooms with legends such as Titanic Thompson and Doyle Brunson. Get a look at vintage Las Vegas when Cowboy's friend, Benny Binion ruled Glitter Gulch and ride along with the road gamblers as they faded the white line from Dallas to Shreveport to Houston in the 1960s in search of games. Read fascinating yarns about life on the rough and tumble, and colorful adventures as a road gambler; feel the fear and frustration of being hijacked, getting arrested for playing poker, and having to outwit card sharps and scam artists. Wolford survived it all to win a gold bracelet at the World Series playing with poker greats Amarillo Slim Preston, Johnny Moss and 1978 World Champion, Bobby Baldwin. Wolford also won 30 rodeo belt buckles. Baldwin says, Cowboy is probably the best gambling story teller in the world.

"In this first substantial study of rodeo women, Mary Lou Lecompte surveys the early rodeo cowgirls' achievements as professional athletes, the near demise of women's rodeo events during World War II, and the phenomenal success of the Women's Professional Rodeo Association in regaining lost ground for rodeo cowgirls. Recalling an extraordinary chapter in women's history as well as the history of American sport, "Cowgirls of the Rodeo" contributes to a deeper understanding of the challenges facing women in the American West and in American sport."

Pages: 192, Edition: 1st, Hardcover, Sea Bird Publishing

Welcome to the World's Most Exciting Race! Chuckwagon racing is unlike any other race, anywhere. Professional chuckwagons thunder at 45 miles per hour. The horses are swift and the cowboys are tough. The ground literally shakes as the wagons careen around the oval track. Never Holler Whoa! provides an inside look at this most thrilling of sports. Through the real-life adventures of three compelling athletes-Kelly Sutherland, Buddy Bensmiller and Jim Nevada-readers will experience the danger, pain and sacrifice of professional racing. From the triumphs to the heartbreaks, these cowboys share their stories.

Welcome to the World's Most Exciting Race! Chuckwagon racing is unlike any other race, anywhere. Professional chuckwagons thunder at 45 miles per hour. The horses are swift and the cowboys are tough. The ground literally shakes as the wagons careen around the oval track. Never Holler Whoa! provides an inside look at this most thrilling of sports. Through the real-life adventures of three compelling athletes-Kelly Sutherland, Buddy Bensmiller and Jim Nevada-readers will experience the danger, pain and sacrifice of professional racing. From the triumphs to the heartbreaks, these cowboys share their stories.

After his remarkable eight-second ride at the 1996 Indian National Finals Rodeo, an elated American Indian world champion bullrider from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, threw his cowboy hat in the air. Everyone in the almost exclusively Indian audience erupted in applause. Over the course of the twentieth century, rodeos have joined tribal fairs and powwows as events where American Indians gather to celebrate community and equestrian competition. In "Riding Buffaloes and Broncos," Allison Fuss Mellis reveals how northern Plains Indians have used rodeo to strengthen tribal and intertribal ties and Native solidarity.

In the late nineteenth century, Indian agents outlawed most traditional Native gatherings but allowed rodeo, which they viewed as a means to assimilate Indians into white culture. Mistakenly, they treated rodeo as nothing more than a demonstration of ranching skills. Yet through selective adaptation, northern Plains horsemen and audiences used rodeo to sidestep federally sanctioned acculturation. Rodeo now enabled Indians to reinforce their commitment to the very Native values--a reverence for horses, family, community, generosity, and competition--that federal agencies sought to destroy.

Mellis has mined archival sources and interviewed American Indian rodeo participants and spectators throughout the northern Great Plains, Southwest, and Canada, including Crow, Northern Cheyenne, and Lakota reservations. The book features numerous photographs of Indian rodeos from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and maps illustrating the all-Indian rodeo circuit in the United States and Canada.

"Campion's photos and prose convey the gritty details of the sport, as well as the very American roots of rodeo. I urge anyone with an interest in rodeo to pick up a copy of this book. The photos alone are worth the price of the volume." -Horsemen's Yankee Pedlar

More than seventeen million people attended rodeos in the United States and Canada last year, and more than thirteen million viewers tuned in to ESPN to watch the National Finals Rodeo, where the top competitors battled for $4.6 million in prize money. Lynn Campion's RODEO is the perfect companion to the sport, sure to entertain and edify longtime fans and novices alike.

Campion traveled to various rodeos for this book, taking photographs and conducting interviews. She gives vivid accounts of the competitions, from the "roughstock" events, in which a cowboy must ride a wild bucking horse or bull for eight seconds, to the timed events, in which competitors must rope calves with split-second precision, leap from the backs of horses to wrestle steers to the ground, or race each other in a cloverleaf pattern around barrels at breakneck speed. The book provides the fascinating details viewers can't see-such as how cowboys train, and where the bucking animals come from (they're carefully bred for their abilities and are treated very well to ensure that they have long careers). Also included are profiles of top performers and listings of world records and annual rankings. Beautifully designed and illustrated, RODEO is a thrilling celebration of America's western heritage.

Rodeo in America celebrates a great national pastime and tradition. Taking the reader "behind the chutes," Wayne Wooden and Gavin Ehringer reveal the essential character of rodeo culture today and show why it retains such a strong hold on the American imagination.

As the authors detail, contemporary rodeo has evolved into a much publicized big-time phenomenon even as it strives to stay close to its fundamental cowboy roots. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) now sanctions 750 to 800 annual rodeos worth more than $22 million in prize money, attended by nearly 20 million spectators, and watched by millions more on ESPN and TNN. The National Finals Rodeo (NFR) alone offers more than $2 million in prize money and is attended by 170,000 spectators every December in Las Vegas.

Filled with telling anecdotes and insightful observations, the authors highlight rodeo's glamour and glory, hazards and hardships, while clarifying its many dimensions as sport, profession, business, community event, family tradition, and pop cultural icon. Bareback and bull riders, calf ropers and steer wrestlers, barrel racers and saddle bronc busters, bullfighters and arena clowns, stock breeders and local organizers, judges and journalists, the famous and aspiring, winners and losers--all are given their due in a work that reflects the enormous allure and demands of rodeo life.

Based on research and interviews conducted at the National Finals, as well as at rodeos large and small in San Francisco, Denver, Houston, Cheyenne, Calgary, Dodge City, Pendleton, and Prescott, among many others, Rodeo in America provides an entertaining and highly readable guide for aficionados and novices alike.

In Rodeo Legends Gavin Ehringer presents the life and times of twenty of the sport of rodeo's greatest athletes, complete with hundreds of photos, many taken during competition. "Career Milestones" sidebars detail the achievements of each arena champion and include both historical and contemporary legendary rodeo figures. In his introduction Ehringer states: "I've tried to talk about their great arena accomplishments, for sure. But I also tried to talk about how they stumbled and fell, then picked themselves up and dusted themselves off." The stories are riveting and at times tear-jerking. Among the most extraordinary is the comeback of all-around champ Joe Beaver after a near-death and subsequent out-of-body experience from overdosing on drugs and alcohol; the sheer endurance of Bruce Ford and his three decades on broncs; and Larry Mahan's study of mental preparedness, his singing career, post-rodeo western-apparel businesses, and now his natural horsemanship and equine wellness programs. The list of rodeo's tall, but true, tales goes on. (8 1/2 x 11, 216 pages, b&w photos)

Gavin Ehringer is one of the most prolific rodeo writers in America. He has written Western Horseman magazine's "Rodeo Arena" column for more than ten years and has reported on every major rodeo event in the West. Ehringer coauthored Rodeo in America with Dr. Wayne Wooden and has written dozens of articles for magazines such as The Quarter Horse Journal, Paint Horse Journal, The National Reining Horse Association Reiner, Horse & Rider, Cowboys & Indians, and American Cowboy. He lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.