Unbridled

A truly wonderful celebration of an American icon the Western horse

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The Western horse has transcended divisions of race, culture, gender, and age to become an American icon. Without it--and the stories it inspires--the West would be impoverished. While much has been written about cowboys and the West, no other anthology exists that focuses exclusively on the animal itself. Unbridled assembles some of the best Western horse stories ever written. The Western horse is seen and described from a variety of perspectives. These are the stories of ranchers, cowboys, soldiers, hunters, trappers, Plains Indians, vaqueros, pioneer women, and even a president. Many of them are well known; some are waiting to be discovered. The unifying sentiment is their respect for and admiration of this most remarkable animal. A long line of commercial successes--from "Black Beauty, "The Horse Whisperer, and "All the Pretty Horses, to "Seabiscuit, and the newly released "Hidalgo--proves that the "personalized horse story" is more than a fluke. It also demonstrates that the circle of aficionados encompasses more than just Quarter Horse owners or rodeo fans. While the success of some of these stories may in part be due to their human characters, horses play an important role in all of them. This anthology includes thirty-two selections, spanning the traditional short story, reminiscence, folk tale, journalistic and historical sketch, and mythology. They speak of an entire landscape, of a way of life now almost obsolete. Writers include such well-known luminaries as Mark Twain, Sir Thomas Seton, Theodore Roosevelt, and Zane Grey, along with the modern Western voices of Thomas McGuane, Mark Spragg, and Gretel Ehrlich.