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Summary: A year without cigarettes in Marlboro country
Review: If you want to retain the cosy illusion of the cowboy as a gun-toting, chain-smoking, horse-riding champion of open ranges, you will find little of it reinforced in David McCumber's excellent first book. But as he says, I have always been a Westerner, which means I have always thought about being a cowboy. Thinking and doing are different."McCumber is former assistant managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner and founding editor and publisher of Big Sky Journal, who, at 44, decided to spend a year slaving as a cowboy on a huge cattle ranch in the high mountains of Montana. It turned out to be a labour of love for this award-winning journalist who at the time was facing a mid-life crisis and gives the reasons for his sabbatical as: "journalistic curiosity about a lifestyle glorified to the point of religion in our culture. It was the final step of letting go, signing on as a gray-headed greenhorn, proposing to make my living out-of-doors, with my body as well as my brain." His detailed description of the Montana cowboy's unenviable daily grind is thoroughly engrossing. In fact this book would be the perfect manual for the ignorant Dude who fancies working on a ranch: there's everything here from rousting renegade steers to the right way to build and repair fences in a snow-drift halfway up a mountain, learning new mechanical skills in the ranch's machine shop and garage, assisting with veterinary operations, and fighting brush fires. McCumber's Montana is a harsh world where cowboys from disparate backgrounds bond while working against extremes of weather. Sadly, the cowpoke's four-legged friend - the horse - has been largely replaced by the more cost-effective small all-terrain vehicle (one driven by petrol not grass), occasional sorties in the Boss's helicopter, and Shank's Pony. By the end of the book, I felt as worn out and exhilarated as the author, whose every moment and enthusiasm for hard work I felt I'd shared. "Many Montanans see their homeland turning from a great place to live and work," he says, "into a virtual theme park full of designer-dressed Westerners who don't understand what it really takes to make a living on the land." Who would blame them for there must be an easier way of making a living than the one vividly described in McCumber's book. After reading it I no longer dream about being a real cowboy but at last I now understand why some people still do. But a cowboy without the comfort of a cigarette still seems a contradiction in terms.
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Summary: Only one thing wrong with this book
Review: It wasnt long enough, I found myself wishing David had stayed on the ranch for another year, so he would have more to write about. Very engrossing couldnt put it down, what day is this??
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Summary: One man's misconstrued midlife crisis
Review: McCumber thinks spending six measly months on a Montana ranch is enough to make him some kind of expert on modern ranching. He works on an outfit that no longer uses horses -- motorcycles instead -- then pronounces that there are no more cowboys, only ranch hands. Hmmm.... Six months and one ranch is hardly enough data to make such a declaration. Yet oddly, his book is unrelentingly sentimental; Basically, it's as if he went to summer camp for forty-something urban men. If you want to read a more comprehensive book about modern cowboying -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- check out "I See By Your Outfit" by Clay Bonnyman Evans (Johnson Books.) Sorry, David, but you don't know the front end of a cow from the back.
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Summary: The New West comes to life
Review: My favorite kind of book: someone leaves his regular life behind to spend time doing something completely different. Writer McCumber hires on as a ranch hand in Montana, and I hurt right along with him reading his baptism by fire into the ways of the large-scale ranch. He tries to fit in with the rest of the guys as he battles the animals, weather, and machines of the ranch. This is, in my opinion, his best book.
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Summary: The New West comes to life
Review: My favorite kind of book: someone leaves his regular life behind to spend time doing something completely different. Writer McCumber hires on as a ranch hand in Montana, and I hurt right along with him reading his baptism by fire into the ways of the large-scale ranch. He tries to fit in with the rest of the guys as he battles the animals, weather, and machines of the ranch. This is, in my opinion, his best book.
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Summary: Enjoyed the book, but it could have been better
Review: Never having been to Montana, I defer to other readers on the book's authenticity. It sounds similar to life on a property in Australia - long hours, little money, lots of equipment - but cold. I enjoyed and was engrossed by the book. But for all the author portrays the large scale of everything - 100,000 acres, big trucks, lots of workers to take care of the lots of cowboys - I wish he'd analysed why everything has to be so large scale. Is it just like the corporate world - we've got too advanced for our own good and have to exhaust ourselves just to keep up with the competition - or would it be possible to ranch less land with less equipment (are 2 airplanes really necessary?) and less cowboys and still make a living? I would have liked the author to explore the characters in more depth - they were a bit one dimensional - but my hat off to him for having managed to have the energy to write a book at all after the hours and labor he was doing!
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Summary: Great story
Review: The Cowboy Way is an excellent story. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys stories of the West or has an interest in what 'real' cowboys are like.
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Summary: Lyrical and magical
Review: The Cowboy Way is one of those books you read in several sittings. The author has a self-deprecating tone that works well with experiences that were new to him on the ranch. He really communicates the relationship between worker and animals, cowboy and the elements. The history background wasn't as seamless as I would have liked, but that's a minor point.
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Summary: Transcendental
Review: There are books that are very well written and interesting, this one is transcendental. The writing itself is above average, though not sublime or groundbreaking, but the imagery presented by this book is simply mindbending. Having never been to Central Montana, I feel like I could find my way around every valley, ranch and town if I were dropped there from the sky. I literally couldn't put this book down... I started reading it and three days later found myself in the interesting position of having to remember where I was, what I was doing before I started reading and wondering just what DAY it was! A book that can do this is sure to rank among those that are read several times over by me, and this one is already gnawing at the edges of my mind again. Oh, sure, McCumber does a fine job of documenting the raw vagaries and subtle joys of ranch life, but it is in the details that his work really shines. I read a review here criticizing his supposed lack of depth regarding the characters... don't believe it. I could meet any one of the members of his book and feel like I knew them well. If you are looking for a book / journal to captivate you and set you down in a different place, this is the book to read.
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Summary: A Must-Have Resource For Writers of the West
Review: This book ruthlessly (and wryly) strips away any idealized notions of the everyday life of a modern-day cowboy. McCumber also strives to reconcile the "old" west to the new (four-wheelers vs horseback, for example) with appropriately ambivalent results. His prose is very much in the style of the kind of work he spent a year performing: nothing wasted. As a writer, I'm sure I'll refer to this book often. As a reader, I wish he'd spent _two_ years on the ranch. That way, the book would have been twice as long.
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