The image of western ranchers making a stand for their
"rights"-against developers, the government, "illegal"
immigrants-may be commonplace today, but the political power of the
cowboy was a long time in the making. In a book steeped in the
culture, traditions, and history of western range ranching,
Michelle K. Berry takes readers into the Cold War world of cattle
ranchers in the American West to show how that power, with its
implications for the lands and resources of the mountain states,
was built, shaped, and shored up between 1945 and 1965. After long
days working the ranch, battling human and nonhuman threats, and
wrestling with nature, ranchers got down to business of another
sort, which Berry calls "cow talk." Discussing the best new
machinery; sharing stories of drought, blizzards, and bugs; talking
money and management and strategy: these ranchers were building a
community specific to their time, place, and work and creating a
language that embodied their culture. Cow Talk explores how this
language and its iconography evolved and how it came to provide
both a context and a vehicle for political power. Using ranchers'
personal papers, publications, and cattle growers association
records, the book provides an inside view of how range cattle
ranchers in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana
created a culture and a shared identity that would frame and inform
their relationship with their environment and with society at large
in an increasingly challenging, modernizing world. A multifaceted
analysis of postwar ranch life, labor, and culture, this innovative
work offers unprecedented insight into the cohesive political and
cultural power of western ranchers in our day.
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