• Lone Prairie Roundup • The CowBoy Handbook • Lone Prairie Poetry Page •
• Lone Prairie Links • Meet the Hands • Home Corral

Comments About The CowBoy Handbook

The CowBoy Handbook has something for everyone who values our CowBoy Heritage. Whether you’re riding the range yourself or watching your favorite silver screen hero, this book makes a great sidekick!

—Gene AUTRY


More than half of my life has been spent with the Sons of the Pioneers. Singing songs of the old west and the American Cowboy has always been our major commitment. Bruce Dillman's commitment to our western heritage has produced this cowboy handbook to preserve the “Cowboy Way.” It’s a Cowboy’s “Bible” on facts and terminology that every big and little wrangler should have.—Dale WARREN, Trail Boss, Sons of the Pioneers

The CowBoy Handbook is an impressive collection of facts and comments, and it’s a delight to read.—Jim Halsey, Impresario

Really enjoyed The Cowboy Handbook—very informative, very entertaining! Thanks for the kind words about us. You caught what we’ve been trying to do! —Douglas Green (Ranger Doug), Riders in the Sky
 This is a great book! . . . I highly recommend this book to everyone who ever looked into the mirror and hoped to see a Western hero look back. —Dusty Johnson, Author of Saddlemaking and Saddle Savvy

It has everything you ought to know about cowboys and more. —Paul E. Mix, Author of Tom Mix
I like this book, the history, the humor—all of it. I’m from cow country, and I’ve been in movie and television Westerns, so I’ve known many of the people and places The CowBoy Handbook tells about. I’m not much of a book reader, but I started The CowBoy Handbook and read till three in the morning. —Bill Hale, Actor & Musician 
It’s about time someone wrote a book like this. The CowBoy Handbook by Bruce Dillman. It’s a history book, a reference book, trivia book it’s an encyclopedia. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the cowboy and the Old West and didn’t know who to ask. I find myself going back to it time and time again. What a great gift for the cowboy or Western enthusiast. —Mark Allen, Mark Allen Productions, Wild West Arts Club 
I thoroughly enjoyed The CowBoy Handbook. It’s the most informative cowboy history I’ve ever read. I keep it with me for reference and entertainment. —Randy Boone, Singer & Actor (“The Virginian” )
Bruce Dillman’s CowBoy Handbook proves that CowBoy fact is funnier, stranger, and more wonder-filled than cowboy fiction. — David Landis, Nebraska Senator 
"If we can believe each of us has an 'inner child' who wants to come out and play," writes Bruce Dillman, "why not an inner CowBoy?"
 According to the author, there has been a transition from cow-boys to cowboys, and then to CowBoys over the past 100 years or so. Dillman defines the three terms and then chronicles how and why the cowboy way has become part and parcel of the American fabric. Cow-boy has historical connotations; cowboys, no matter if real or reel, succeeded cow-boys; and CowBoy, as Dillman coined the term, encompasses the resulting spirit or attitude that has developed from contact with the other two.
 The Cowboy Handbook is a fine primer about cowboys, however you define them, both then and now, and it's obvious the author has done his homework. Chapters are organized into several user-friendly sections. Part IV, for example, includes brief bios of well-known cowboys, a timeline of cowboy events, and a glossary of relevant terms. There are listings, by state, of cowboy-type things to see and do, and the final section includes BATs—Buckaroo Attitude Triggers.
The author's goal: ". . . to get back to fact and bring some reality back to the range. But not too much," he writes "Myth serves a valuable purpose, and sagas of the saddle can improve your fun and fortune." The CowBoy Handbook provides plenty of entertainment with the reality. Even though he has done his historical research and mastered the language, Dillman simply refuses to let either history or the language get in his way when it comes to having fun with his favorite topic. Reckon he's had his CowBoy attitude triggered. 
—WESTERN HORSEMAN, December l996


I recommend it. Not only does he have his facts straight, but he can write. It's entertaining. He has a great sense of humor. It's a great book.
—Tex Hill, CowBoy Actor, Stuntman, Singer, Horseman
 

I LOVED your book! Couldn't put it down!!!!! 
—Lauren Muney, Wild West Artist
 

 Your book is the best. I am really enjoying it. You are a very knowlegable guy. Great stuff! —Sourdough Slim, The Yodeling Cowboy
 
I want to thank Bruce Dillman for the efforts he put into producing The CowBoy Handbook. I have used it in my classroom to teach eleven year olds the history of cowboys. We have produced a musical called Cowboys, Cowboys, Cowboys. The book gave us the background information that helped us write this musical. It also gave us the ability to teach the children the truth about cowboys. The book is well written and factual on the history of cowboys. It is also witty and humorous. It is a book that you will not want to put down once you have picked it up. 
—Dave Villafana, 
Teacher & President of Cupertino (California) Education Association
 
      Bruce Dillman's The CowBoy Handbook is a beguiling, good-natured and extremely useful guide to all things pertaining to both the historical and romanticized cowboy. His well-written account of the heyday of the American cowboy, from the close of the Civil War until the advent of barbed wire, is filled with intriguing historical facts and humorous anecdotes. His explanation of the gradual canonization of the cowboy via dime novels, pulps, motion pictures and popular songs is helpful and well-constructed.
      The book includes a cowboy chronology and biographical sketches of prominent cowboy types—both sections highly subjective, of necessity. Each of us would develop our own list of important facts, figures, and heroes, as Dillman has done quite well. His selections provide a solid base upon which both the teacher and the enthusiast may freely expand. In the last portion of The CowBoy Handbook, we are treated to some thoroughly delightful recommendations as to how to live the cowboy life and where to go to see cowboy memorabilia and related performances. A glossary of colorful cowboy terms serves as a perfect accompaniment to the cleverly conceived text.
      When I was teaching college courses in the 1980s and covering many of the subjects Dillman has covered so well, I would have welcomed The CowBoy Handbook as a required text. Others will find it a valuable tool and a highly readable, breezy account of a deeply loved aspect of American history and popular culture.
 —Jonathan Guyot Smith, Broadcaster, Writer, Folklore Professor, Western Enthusiast
The scope of CowBoy Handbook is as wide as the prairie. Bruce Dillman's topics range from the real West to the Reel West. Settlement of the West, clothing, rangeland lingo, cowtowns, pulps and books. Its all here, including a 13-page chapter on horse opera heroes from Broncho Billy, Hart and Mix to Autry, Wayne and Cassidy and a six-page TV Trail section. Subjective by necessity, Dillman's 34-page bio section includes reel (Rogers, Barcroft, Yak, Cassidy, Gabby, McCoy, Maynard, Mix) and real (Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley). Writer Jon Guyot Smith calls it a "valuable tool and highly readable." We agree.
 —Western Clippings by Boyd Magers
      I am most certainly a fan of 'cowboy-dom,' and am pleased to add your work to my incomplete collection on the subject. For once, here I have a well researched, lucid book, as too often books on the Cowboy are heavy-on-myth or somewhat pandering.
      I was particularly struck with the last three chapters, which, though very different on tone, still appropriately finished your well written book. I'd like to see more. The sign of a good book is that it whets the appetite from first to last page, and I found that the case with The CowBoy Handbook. Well done.
 —Mark Alderete Artist
It is a good book, and I just keep rereading it over and over again.
 —George L. Morgan
Valley Center, Kansas
It's a real neat book and not boring.
 —Kim Westfahl
Belton, Missouri
• Lone Prairie Roundup • The CowBoy Handbook • Lone Prairie Poetry Page •
• Lone Prairie Links • Meet the Hands • Home Corral

Copyright © 1998 Outcomes Incorporated. All rights reserved.