This comprehensive new survey of the literary traditions and distinctively American character of this popular genre presents a timely reference that allows readers to experience the myriad creative responses evoked by the promise of the new frontier. 36 illustrations.

Stretching from "Aaron, Sam, Arizona pioneer" to "Zutacapan, Acomo pueblo chief," the three-volume Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography, and Supplemental-volume 4, profiles approximately 4,500 frontier pioneers and Native Americans. Dan L. Thrapp's comprehensive work will interest scholars, researchers, and general readers curious about the figures who developed, defended, decorated, and devilized the American West. All the famous ones are here: Volume I (A-F) includes Billy the Kid, Daniel Boone, Calamity Jane, George Custer, Buffalo Bill, Cochise, and John C. Fremont, among others. There are also entries for worthies less well known: Big Nose Kate, Nellie Cashman, Scott Cooley, to cite a few. Even Gary Cooper and other actors who portrayed westerners are sketched in. Thrapp's richly detailed biographies are continued in Volumes II (G-O) and III (P-Z). Thrapp has included seventeenth- and eighteenth-century figures in both New France and New England, as well as the trans-Appalachian country, but the majority are nineteenth-century men and women who discovered, settled, fought for, or simply lived in the raw lands west of the Mississippi River.

This classic describes the life of a cowboy who is a natural aristocrat, set against a highly mythologized version of the Johnson County War and taking the side of the large land owners. The Virginian paved the way for many more westerns by such authors as Zane Grey, Louis L'Amour, and several others. Owen Wister (1860-1938) was an American writer and "father" of western fiction. When he started writing, he naturally inclined towards fiction set on the western frontier. Wister's most famous work remains the novel The Virginian.

Over 450 entries provide information on cowboy history, culture, and myth of both North and South America.

From automatons to zombies, many elements of fantasy and science fiction have been cross-pollinated with the Western movie genre. In its second edition, this encyclopedia of the Weird Western includes many new entries covering film, television, animation, novels, pulp fiction, short stories, comic books, graphic novels and video and role-playing games. Categories include Weird, Weird Menace, Science Fiction, Space, Steampunk and Romance Westerns.

B.M. Bower's book "Rim o' the World" is full of adventure, good times, and romance. Set in the Idaho region of Black Rim. It depicts the tale of financially strapped range riders Tom and Belle Lorrigan, their three sons Al, Duke, and Lance, as well as their romantic relationship