Way Out West - Softcover

Stern, Jane; Stern, Michael; Rn, Michael Stern

3.67

12 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060925604 ISBN 13: 9780060925604

Publisher: Perennial, 1994

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An assortment of western American images, stories, and facts includes cowboy songs, a four-alarm chili recipe, instructions for creasing a cowboy hat, tips on recognizing turquoise quality, and a desert life guide. Reprint. National ad/promo.

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From the Publisher:

From six-shooters and silver spurs to Red River and Roy Rogers, this handsomely illustrated book, by America's foremost pop culture connoisseurs, celebrates the Western frontier and its influence on fashion, music, film, and lifestyles.

From Kirkus Reviews:

And somewhere out in left field, too: The Sterns' new addition to their popular volumes of Americana (The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste, Sixties People, Elvis World, etc.) tackles ``the West of the imagination''--the West mythologized by dime novels, TV, and films; populated by singing cowboys who kiss their horses, Indians who raise their right hands and say ``How,'' and pesky ``critters'' like rattlesnakes and scorpions; and redolent with the scent of hot chili and chicken-fried steak. The husband-and-wife team do their usual entertaining job of rounding up this retrograde West-- providing plenty of lore on rodeos, natural wonders, ``equine superstars'' (the rumor is true: Trigger is indeed stuffed and on display at the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in Victoryville, California, along with Bullet the Wonder Dog and Dale's horse, Buttermilk), lariat-throwing, proper cowboy dinners, and so on. But to pretend--other than in a few paragraphs--that this West isn't a mirage floating above a sea of oppression and bloodshed, and to celebrate this phantasmagorical vision, seems akin to celebrating the Old South without reference to the slavery that sustained it. Moreover, the author's survey leaves out several crucial, if less cute, elements of the Western myth. Astonishingly, there's no discussion of outlaws here--no Billy the Kid, no Jesse James; there's no survey of the black cowboys who rode alongside the whites (and who do figure in the myth, as in Woody Strode's many Western film roles); and while the Sterns chronicle the stereotyped representation of Indians, they offer no survey of more real, and equally enduring, images of Indians, as in the film A Man Called Horse. All in all, then, a lopsided, outdated guide, best suited for those who still think that Custer died with his boots on. (Photographs--200 b&w and 300 color) -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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