Rodeo in America

This text explores a national pastime and tradition. It reveals rodeo culture and shows why it retains such a hold on the American imagination. It highlights rodeo's glamour and hardships while clarifying its dimensions as sport, profession, community event, family tradition, and pop culture icon.

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This work celebrates a great national pastime and tradition. Taking the reader ""behind the chutes"", Wayne Wooden and Gavin Ehringer reveal the essential character of rodeo culture today and show why it retains such a strong hold on the American imagination. As the authors detail, contemporary rodeo has evolved into a much publicised big-time phenomenon even as it strives to stay close to its fundamental cowboy roots. The Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association (PRCA) now sanctions 750 to 800 annual rodeos, worth more than 22 million dollars in prize money, attended by nearly 20 million spectators, and watched by millions more on ESPN and TNN. The National Finals Rodeo (NFR) alone offers more than two million dollars in prize money and is attended by 170,000 spectators in Las Vegas every December. Filled with telling anecdotes and insightful observations, the book highlights rodeo's glamour and glory, hazards and hardships, while clarifying its many dimensions as sport, profession, business, community event, family tradition, and pop cultural icon. Bareback and bull riders, calf ropers and steer wrestlers, barrel racers and saddle bronc busters, bullfighters and arena clowns, stock breeders and local organisers, judges and journalists, the famous and aspiring, winners and losers - all are given their due in a work that reflects the enormous allure and demands of rodeo life. Based on research and interviews conducted at the National Finals, as well as at rodeos large and small in San Francisco, Denver, Houston, Cheyenne, Calgary, Dodge City, Pendleton, and Prescott, among many others, ""Rodeo in America"" provides a guide for aficionados and novices alike.