Andy Adams – författare

This sparkling collection of tales told around Western campfires, written by the master chronicler of the range, is a literary find of great interest and genuine importance.Andy Adams is remembered chiefly as the author of The Log of a Cowboy. Among the most charming features of the Log are the stories the cowhands told around the fires at night when the day's work was done. Similar and equally delightful stories are scattered throughout several other less successful novels, long out of print, while others that never saw publication were found by the editor among Adams' papers.In the present book, Wilson M. Hudson has gathered together these tales of the trail and camp into one volume that surely will delight the hearts of all readers who are interested in the old West.

What are the connections between cattle branding and Christian salvation, between livestock castration and square dancing, between cattle rustling and the making of spurs and horsehair bridles in prison, between children's coloring books and cowboy poetry as it is practiced today? The Cowboy uses literary, historical, folkloric, and pop and cultural sources to document ways in which cowboys address religion, gender, economics, and literature. Arguing that cowboys are defined by the work they do, Allmendinger sets out in each chapter to investigate one form of labor (such as branding, castration, or rustling) in the cowboy's "work culture." He looks at early oral poems recited around campfires, on trail drives, at roundups, and at home in ranch bunkhouses, and at later poems, histories, and autobiographies written by cowboys about their work - most of which have never before received scholarly attention. Allmendinger shows how these texts address larger concerns than the work at hand - including art, morality, spirituality, and male sexuality. In addition to spotlighting little-known texts, art, and archival sources, The Cowboy examines the works of Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Willa Cather, Louis L'Amour, Larry McMurtry, and others. Unique among studies of the American cowboy, Allmendinger's study looks at what cowboys thought of themselves, and the ways in which they represented those thoughts in their own prose, poetry, and artifacts. Richly illustrated with photographs of cowboys at work and at play, many previously unpublished, The Cowboy will interest scholars of American literature and history, and American Studies, as well as those interested in Western history and culture,folklore, and gender studies.

Andy Adams' The Log of a Cowboy has long been acknowledged a classic of western American literature. Hoffman Birney, in the New York Times Book Review, once declared, "If there is such a thing as an all-time 'best' Western, that is it." One of the most delightful features of the Log is the inclusion of tales told by the cowboys at night. Adams was a master of the campfire tale, and the fifty-one collected here, each told by an Andy Adams character, touch upon every aspect of range life. Readers will never forget characters like Bull Durham, Uncle Dave Hapfinger, and Aaron Scales, or the tale of the tubercular drifter whose death caused tough cowboys to cry, or the gruesome account of the hanging of the renegade Kansas lawman, or the humorous incident of the "big brindle muley ox" that decided to ride instead of walk.

Two orphans face starvation on the prairie of northeastern Kansas during the terrible winter of 1885–86. Dell and Joel Wells, redheads who have barely reached shaving age, are about to abandon their dead father's claim on Beaver Creek because it won't grow crops. Then unexpected events, and a drover seeking aid, allow them a decent chance in life. First published in 1911, Wells Brothers, The Young Cattle Kings shows what happens when experienced enterprise meets youthful energy. The boys develop their own ranch on the Beaver, without capital but with honor. No amount of savvy can entirely prepare them for the risks: cruel winters, rapacious wolf packs, summer droughts, mysterious Texas fever, the shifting circumstances of the cattle trade. Andy Adams (1859–1935), author of the classic Log of a Cowboy (also available as a Bison Book), wraps the saga of the Wells brothers in authentic western atmosphere and lore.