Rating: 
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.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fascinating Look at a Modern Day Cattle Ranch
Review: This book was very interesting in that all the glamour and hollywood images of the cowboy are blown away almost from the first page. Being a cowboy in central Montana in the '90s is tough, backbreaking work, 12 or more hours a day, often seven days a week. It's dirty, lonely, and unforgivingly dangerous. It also offers the chance to experience first-hand the raw beauty of an unspoiled land, and the immense satisfaction gained by hard work done well. The people who lead this lifestyle are shown as simple, honest, and hard working, yet also very suspicious of 'outsiders', the government, and all other ways of life. I was not only entertained by this book, but gained a new-found appreciation for hard work and it's rewards, and also for those who perform such tasks day after day and wouldn't change it for the world..
Rating:
Summary: The best book on ranch life
Review: This is a GREAT Book!!!!!!! I have never read a better book on ranch life or the modern American West. It is based in White Sulphur Springs Montana and Mcumber brings it all to life with exquisite realism. All I can Say is READ THIS BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: The best book on ranch life
Review: This is a GREAT Book!!!!!!! I have never read a better book on ranch life or the modern American West. It is based in White Sulphur Springs Montana and Mcumber brings it all to life with exquisite realism. All I can Say is READ THIS BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant study of modern ranch life
Review: This is a towering and lyrical journal of a year's life on a vast Montana ranch. McCumber has a fine eye for detail as he catches the daily toil, heartache and joy of the ranch hand. He carries us through the seasons, from Montana's brutal winters, when the calves begin to arrive, through the fierce summers and idyllic falls. This is a narrative that strips the romance out of ranching, forever destroys the mythic cowboy, only to replace that American legend with something more honest and in the end, more poetical and heroic. His descriptions of doctoring cattle, feeding hay in brutal weather, heat and thirst, and the ever-changing crew of rural nomads who come and go at modern ranches, is unforgettable. This book gripped me from the first sentence.
Rating:
Summary: Writer Living the Modern day Life of a Real Cowboy:
Review: This is quite an undertaking by the author to leave the comforts of the modern world to work in a Montana cattle ranch for a year. The author experiences everything that a new hand will be required to do from the ground up. From virtually using large farm equipment to dump trucks, to manure haulers including repair work and cleaning that keep the equipment in shape. McCumber does a lot of humbling work all through the year with high points of fence repair in beautiful wide open country, to capturing strays usually on four wheel all terrain vehicles and the highlight of occasional work on horse back. Long, often-grueling days of honest work that test many a hand that quit and occasionally return. The amount of land involved in the Galt ranch is mesmerizing along with all the equipment needed to keep it all going. Quite astonishing to read that the owner can actually perform successful cesareans on cows that have breech problems along with a unique castration of a bull with a stone cramping his hose so to speak that as a result now has an alternate urethra. The author does a wide range of mundane work but works his way up to running heavy equipment, wrestling steers for branding to actually vaccinating cows to the joy of driving cattle when its on horseback. He may not have learned it all but he experienced it all and actually became accomplished at most. The rewards for the hard work are his satisfaction of accomplishment, being out in beautiful open country and the occasional run at old cowboy style work on horseback. This book reads like a highly readable and entertaining diary, which also lets you get to know all the hands and owner who must love the life to endure the days. At the end of the final chapter, you feel like you know them very well and you wish for another chapter or perhaps a personal newsletter.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful tale
Review: This was a wonderful tale about life on a real working ranch. His style is easy to read and easy to get through. Maybe its because I've always wanted to be a cowboy that I enjoyed this book so much
Rating:
Summary: The Cowboy Way
Review: What a wonderful book!! I am nearly finished with the book and as soon as I am I will read it over again. I am wishing th author stayed on another year to write more. The author has a very genuine personality which he expresses in his book. My dream would be to work on a ranch and through this book I was able to live it a little. A MUST read if you have ever dreamed of working on a ranch and enjoy hard satisfying work!
Rating:
Summary: The Cowboy Way
Review: What a wonderful book!! I am nearly finished with the book and as soon as I am I will read it over again. I am wishing th author stayed on another year to write more. The author has a very genuine personality which he expresses in his book. My dream would be to work on a ranch and through this book I was able to live it a little. A MUST read if you have ever dreamed of working on a ranch and enjoy hard satisfying work!
Rating:
Summary: Cowboy virtues
Review: When I first noticed this book, I was mildly intrigued; after the first few pages, I was engrossed. Mr. McCumber has an engaging style that avoids "gee-whiz" or "slumming in the country" overtones. He captures vividly the tiring, dirty and often dangerous labor and financial risk involved in ranching today.Much of the American cowboy-hero myth has been fed by the ignorance of us Easterners, comfortably removed from the drudgery and rawness of the West. Yet the cowboy-hero stands on a "code" of solid, and very real, virtues: fortitude and competence in your work, being good for your word, and "backing your partner's play." Today's real cowboys judge one another by those values; those who last in a ranch crew live by them. Their reality may not be for most of us, yet we can respect and profit from its example.
|
