First published in 1977, Robert Day’s The Last Cattle Drive—an instant bestseller and Book-of-the-Month Club selection—is now a modern-day Western classic. This raucous, rollicking novel of a cattle drive in the age of the automobile revived a genre and added its own special twists in capturing the imagination of readers nationwide. To honor the thirtieth anniversary of its publication, the University Press of Kansas is proud to announce a new 30th anniversary edition of this much-loved work. This edition includes these new features: a foreword by acclaimed Western historian Howard R. Lamar, reflecting on the novel’s enduring popularity; an afterword by Robert Day recalling the experience of writing the novel and commenting on his own literary heroes (among them Mark Twain); “The Last Cattle Drive Stampede,” Day’s hilarious piece about failed attempts to make a movie of the book; and special endpaper maps of the cattle-drive route. Whether you’re renewing your affection for an old favorite or coming to the work for the first time, this new edition will be a book to treasure and return to time and time again.

The Thirtieth anniversary edition of THE Kansas cult novel--a wild romp across 1970s Kansas--with a new foreword by Howard Lamar, new afterword by the author, and a reprinted essay, "The Last Cattle Drive Stampede," that is a send-up of some of Hollywood's feckless attempts to make a move based on the popular novel.

Fetching, with some tall, raunchy saddletalk and a style as clear as sweet buttered corn.

Tells the stories of sixteen women who drove cattle up the trail from Texas during the last half of the nineteenth century.

From the Preface My novel The Last Cattle Drive was first published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1977. There were good reviews in the New York Times and in many other papers around the country. It was a Book-of-Month-Club selection. Secker and Warburg in London (George Orwell's publisher) brought out a fine edition to excellent reviews in the papers and on the BBC. Both the British and the US publishers issued second printings, and both later brought out paperback editions. As it happened, when the first edition came out, I was in New York to see Tim Seldes at Russell and Volkening, my agent in those days, and he took me for a ride up Fifth Avenue to see that Scribner's windows were filled with the hardcover editions. By now the novel has never been out of print, and these days it exists in a special anniversary edition published by the University of Kansas Press. It's as if the book has been my friend all these years, although long ago I stopped giving readings from it and explaining how with glee I ripped off Mark Twain and Vladimir Nabokov. There is more to say later about this, but the meantime, how come it has taken all these years until now for me to write a sequel?-Robert Day