Western Classics

Readers of American Western Magazine selected their favorite westerns of the past 100 years in a poll in 2000.

	Jack London. The Call Of The Wild The adventures of an unusual dog, part St. Bernard, part Scotch shepherd, that is forcibly taken to the Klondike gold fields where he eventually becomes the leader of a wolf pack.
	Louis L'Amour. Hondo Two men. One woman. A land that demanded courage--or death... He was a man etched by the desert's howling winds, a big, broad-shouldered man who knew the ways of the Apache and ways of staying alive. She was a woman raising a young son on her own on a remote Arizona ranch. And between Hondo Lane and Angie Lowe was the warrior Vittoro, whose people were preparing to rise against the white men. Now the pioneer woman, the gunman, and the Apache warrior are caught in a drama of love, war, and honor.
	Dale L. Walker. Bear Flag Rising From the Indians who inhabited the land before the first Europeans saw it through the warfare that would finally leave the province in American hands, this book traces the history of California.
	Charles Portis. True Grit The story of Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old girl from Arkansas, who sets out in the winter of 1870-something to avenge the murder of her father.
	Richard Matheson. Journal of the Gun Years Being choice selections from the Authentic, never-before-printed diary of the famous gunfighter-lawman Clay Halser, whose deeds of daring made his name a by-word of terror in the Southwest between the years of 1866 and 1876!
	Will Henry. From Where the Sun Now Stands The story of Chief Joseph who lead the Nez Pierce on a rear-guard action from Oregon to Montana in 1877.
	B. Traven. Treasure of the Sierra Madre Follows the rugged adventure of three Americans hunting for gold in the mountains of Mexico who find themselves caught in a morality tale of greed and betrayal.
	Richard S. Wheeler. Sun Mountain "There has never been a place like the Comstock or a city like Virginia or a gathering of brilliant men such as those who assembled there". So writes Henry Stoddard in this unforgettable memoir of Virginia City, Nevada.Stoddard is drawn to Virginia City in the early 1860s. A reporter on the town's daily newspaper, The Territorial Enterprise, he comes to know all who make the town and are made by it.
	J. Frank Dobie. Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver A collection of stories of people searching for treasure.
	J. Frank Dobie. Coronado's Children Recounts the tales and legends of people who searched for lost treasure in the southwest.
	J. Frank Dobie. The Longhorns In The Longhorns, he tells of the Spanish conquistadors, who brought their cattle with them; of ranching in the turbulent colonial times; of the cowboy, whose abandon, energy, insolence, and pride epitomized the booming West. He writes of terrifying stampedes, titantic bull fights on the range, ghost steers, and encounters with Indians.
	Dee Brown. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee An eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated.
	Dee Brown. The Gentle Tamers A lively, informal but soundly factual account of notable women who helped build the West in the mid to late 1800s. Traces how the reaction of these women to the frontier experience influenced the development of American mores and democracy.
	Frank Norris. McTeague A commentary on turn-of-the century American cultural values.
	Willa Cather. Death Comes for the Archbishop Death Comes for the Archbishop is Willa Cather's best-known novel, a narrative whose spare beauty achieves epic--and even mythic--qualities as it recounts a life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert.
	Willa Cather. My Antonia Tells the story of a remarkable woman whose strength and passion epitomize the pioneer spirit. Antonia Shimerda returns to Black Hawk, Nebraska, to made a fresh start after eloping with a railway conductor following the tragic death of her father. Accustomed to living in a sod house and toiling alongside the men in the fields, she is unprepared for the lecherous reaction her lush sensuality provokes when she moves to the city.
	Willa Cather. O Pioneers Tells the story of an immigrant family's struggle to save their Nebraska farm. Cather's placement of a strong and capable woman at the center of the story, her realistic depiction of life on the midwestern prairie, and her vivid portrayal of the immigrant experience at the turn of the century make O Pioneers! a true American classic.
	Alan Le May. The Searchers Ex-Confederate soldier Ethan Edwards is an Indian-hater who believes more in bullets than words. He's out to find his young niece, who's been taken captive by the renegade Comanches who massacred her family.
	Alan Le May. The Unforgiven An ex-gunslinger is drawn back into his murderous past when a bounty is put out to avenge an attack on a frontier town prostitute.
	Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse Biography of the leader of the Oglalas.
	Walter Van Tillburg Clark. The Ox-bow Incident This is the classic novel of American frontier life and mob violence that powerfully explores the conflict between justice and primal human nature.
	Walter Van Tillburg Clark. The Track of the Cat
	Thomas Berger. Little Big Man Jack Crabb, the 111 year old narrator, was the son of two fathers - one white and one a Cheyenne indian chief. The novel is part farce and part history as Crabb tells his story.
	Wallace Stegner. Angle of Repose Four generations in the life of an American family are chronicled as retired historian Lyman Ward, confined to a wheelchair, decides to write his grandparent's history.
	Don Berry. A Majority of Scoundrels
	Ernest Haycox. Bugles in the Afternoon Kern Shafter joins the US Cavalry in 1875 Dakota Territory.
	Glendon Swarthout. The Shootist John Bernard Brooks,a legendary gunfighter afflicted with a terminal illness, seeks medical attention and solitudein Carson City. However, he finds himself embroiled in one last battle.
	Zane Grey. Riders of the Purple Sage Riders of the Purple Sage, perhaps more than any other novel, contributed to the concept of the American West. It has the classic elements of the genre: revenge, fast horses, abduction, pistol duels, cattle stampedes, daring pursuits and escapes, dark secrets, hidden gold, pastoral refuge, splendid sunsets - and Grey's emphasis on the passion of man and woman.
	Zane Grey. Wanderers of the Wasteland
	Conrad Richter. The Light in the Forest True Son had been born into a frontier family, but all he could remember, all that he loved, was Native American. Now, at fifteen, he was ordered to go back to the white man, whom he had learned to hate. Where did he belong--and where could he go?
	Lee Hoffman. The Valdez Horses Chino Valdez was ugly, withdrawn, and a devil when drunk. But everyone respected his ability as a horseman. No man knew breeding and training the way Valdez did. Yet even though he earned the admiration of a young boy, and tamed the wildest stallion, there was one thing he could not control -- the love of a woman he could never have...
	Ed Gorman. Dark Trail Leo Guild's wife Sarah ran off with Frank Evans, a gunfighter. Sarah asks Leo to save Frank from a gunfight he's about to take part in.  Can Leo put aside his feelings and save Frank or will he take Sarah back for his own.
	Ed Gorman. Wolf Moon
	Jane Candia Coleman. Moving On Collection of short stories about the American west.
	Edna Ferber. Cimarron A story of the founding of Oklahoma.
	Robert Utley. The Lance and The Shield Few figures in American history have been so little understood as Sitting Bull. This first authoritative study of any Native American leader considers the legendary warrior in terms of his people's cultural values, exposes many ironies of Indian-white relations, and more.
	Walter Prescott Webb. The Great Plains This classic description of the interaction between the vast central plains of America and the people who lived there has, since its first publication in 1931, been one of the most influential, widely known, and controversial works in western history.
	Walter Prescott Webb. Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense In The Texas Rangers, published by UT Press in 1965, Walter Prescott Webb told the story of this unique law enforcement agency as no one else could. Forsaking the historian's ivory tower, Webb rode with the Rangers in the days when desperate, greedy men thought the border between Texas and Mexico was an open gate to bootleggers. He loved the harsh country through which the Rangers rode, and he loved the tempering of the steel within the Rangers that came from a life short on comfort and long on danger. The Texas Rangers grew out of the stories Webb heard around Ranger campfires at night, as the men drank coffee and swapped tales of their adventures.
	Larry McMurtry. Lonesome Dove A love story and an epic of the frontier, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last, defiant wilderness of America. Richly authentic, beautifully written, Lonesome Dove is a book to make readers laugh, weep, dream and remember.
	Owen Wister. The Virginian Dime novels had featured some rather scrawny horse-bound tenders of cattle, but not until 1902 did the cowboy become a fully realized article of American culture. That year Owen Wister, a native of Philadelphia, published the novel that established the conventions of the western.
	Elmer Kelton. The Good Old Boys Hewey Calloway has a problem. In his west Texas home of 1906, the land and way of life he loves are changing too quickly. As Hewey struggles against the relentless stream of "progress," he comes to realize that the simple life of his childhood is vanishing - and that every choice he makes requires a sacrifice.
	Elmer Kelton. Man Who Rode Midnight Wes Hendrix once rode Midnight, a bucking horse no one else could ride. Now he is fighting off developers who want to build a recreational lake on his land.
	Elmer Kelton. The Pumpkin Rollers In the cattle drives of the Old West, pumpkin rollers were green farmboys, almost more trouble than they were worth. When Trey McLean leaves an east Texas cotton farm to learn the cattleman's trade, he learns fast--about deceit among men and the love of a woman. When luck sets him on a cattle drive to Kansas, Trey learns the trade, and the unwritten code of violence that plagues it.
	Elmer Kelton. The Time It Never Rained To the ranchers and farmers of 1950s Texas, man's biggest enemy is one he can't control. With their entire livelihood pegged on the chance of a wet year or a dry year, drought has the ability to crush their whole enterprise, to determine who stands and who falls, and to take food out of the mouths of the workers and their families. To Charlie Flagg, an honest, decent, and cantankerous rancher, the drought of the early 1950s is a foe that he must fight on his own grounds. Refusing the questionable "help" of federal aid programs, Charlie and his family struggle to make the ranch survive until the time it rains again-if it ever rains again.
	Cormac McCarthy. All the Pretty Horses Tells the story of John Grady Cole who, at 16, finds himself at the dying end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself.
	Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridianbrilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.
	B.M. Bower. Chip of the Flying U
	James Michener. Centennial This is the story of trappers, traders, homesteaders, gold seekers, ranchers, hunters -- all caought up in the dramatic events and violent conflicts that shaped the destiny of our legendary West.
	James Michener. Texas In this magnificent historical novel, Michener masterfully combines fact and fiction to present the richest, most expansive, and most diversified state. Spanning four-and-a-half centuries, this monumental novel charts the epic history of the state of Texas, from its Spanish roots in the age of the conquistadors to its modern-day American character, shaped by oil and industry
	Frank Roderus. Potter's Fields This is the tale of Joe Potter, a cold-blooded killer who hides behind his badge. He lives for the thrill of sudden bloodshed, booze, and the women who make him feel whole again. But Joe can't outrun his demons. The moment of truth arrives when an Indian woman and her child force him to face the one thing he can't destroy--his past.
	Frederick Manfred. Lord Grizzly
	Tony Hillerman. The Ghostway Tribal Policeman Jim Chee goes after a killer--and on an odyssey of murder and revenge that moves from an Indian hogan and its trapped ghost to the dark underbelly of LA to a healing ceremony whose cure could be death.
	William MacLeod Raine. Sons of the Saddle
	Elmore Leonard. Hombre A halfbreed must decide whether to save himself and his Apache heritage or aid his fellow white passengers on a stagecoach.
	Clair Huffaker. The Cowboy and the Cossack A group of Montana cowboys go to Siberia to drive a herd of Texas longhorns 1,000 miles.
	Clair Huffaker. Cowboy
	Esther Wier. The Loner
	Joe Lansdale. Dead in the West
	Joe Lansdale. The Magic Wagon In turn-of-the-century Texas, Buster Fogg's family is wiped out by a tornado.  He hitches a ride with a patent medicine pusher who claims to be Wild Bill Hickock's illegitimate son.
	Bruce Kiskaddon. Classic Rhymes: Cowboy Poetry
	Bruce Kiskaddon. Ranch Trails & Other Verse
	Bruce Kiskaddon. Rhymes of the Ranges
	Fred Grove. No Bugles, No Glory
	Vardis Fisher. Mountain Man Tailored after the actual "Crow Killer" John Johnson, Sam Minard is a mountain man who seeks the freedom that the Rocky Mountains offers trappers. After his beloved Indian wife is murdered, Sam Minard becomes obsessed with vengeance, and his fortunes become intertwined with those of Kate Bowden, a widow who faces madness. This remarkable frontier fiction captures that brief season when the romantic myth of the far West became a fact.
	Edwin R. Sweeney. Cochise Biography of the Apache chief.
	Jack Schaefer. Heroes Without Glory
	Jack Schaefer. Monte Walsh Monte Walsh is a classic cowboy who loves his horse, coffee and stringing barbed-wire bare handed.
	Jack Schaefer. Shane In the summer of 1889, a mysterious and charismatic man rides into a small Wyoming valley, where he joins homesteaders who take a stand against a bullying cattle rancher, and where he changes the lives of a young boy and his parents.
	C. L. Sonnichsen. I'll Die Before I'll Run The prominent historian C.L. Sonnichsen leaves no doubt that bad blood so often turned into bloody feuds in Texas because there the folk law of the frontier was reinforced by the unwritten code of honor of the South, and because everybody in Texas went armed. Although the Regulators and Moderates warred in eastern Texas in the 1840s, the really big feuds were ignited by the Civil War and flamed until late in the century, when the Texas Rangers began to put them out.
	C. L. Sonnichsen. Tularosa: Last of the Frontier West
	Terry C. Johnston. Carry the Wind
	Terry C. Johnston. Winter Rain Jonah Hook was a man who had lost everything a man could lose--but the iron will to reclaim what had been taken from him. Now he must confront the fiery religious heretic who has enslaved his wife and the fierce Comanche tribe who has raised his long-lost sons.
	A.B.Guthrie, Jr. The Big Sky With its living picture of the frontier, its stark and beautiful scenery and its extraordinary people, The Big Sky puts a name to the Western legend. This first volume of Guthrie's six Big Sky novels lays the foundation for an unforgettable journey.
	A.B.Guthrie, Jr. The Way West Finely crafted and timelessly entertaining, The Way West won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished fiction in 1950. Dick Summers returns to guide a group of settlers on the hazardous wagon train to Oregon...
	Dorothy M. Johnson. Buffalo Woman A fictionalized account, as seen through the eyes of a woman known as Whirlwind, of life with the Oglala Sioux from 1820 through the aftermath of the victory at the Little Bighorn in 1877.
	Dorothy M. Johnson. Indian Country Indian Country contains two of Dorothy M. Johnson's most famous stories. "A Man Called Horse" depicts the life of a white captive in a Crow Indian camp. "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" explains in flashback why a prominent senator appears at the funeral of an obscure western codger. Both stories were adapted into highly successful movies. These eleven stories show a frontier alive with complex struggles.
	Edward Abbey. The Journey Home
	Lucia St Clair Robson. Ride the Wind
	Bernard DeVoto. Across the Wide Missouri Tells the compelling story of the climax and decline of the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the 1830s. More than a history, it portrays the mountain fur trade as a way of business and a way of life, vividly illustrating how it shaped the expansion of the American West.
	Will James. Smoky the Cowhorse The experiences of a mouse-colored horse from his birth in the wild, through his capture by humans and his work in the rodeo and on the range, to his eventual old age.
	James Fenimore Cooper. The Last of the Mohicans A classic portrait of the man of moral courage who severs all ties with a society whose values he can no longer accept.
	Luke Short. Ramrod Dave Nash, a cowhand, belives in loyalty, even to a cowardly rancher.  When the rancher is run off after his attempts to bring sheep to the region, his strong willed fiancee Connie takes over running the ranch with Nash's help.