James D. Best

“A mine is a hole in the ground, owned by a liar.” Mark Twain I recently saw a college friend for the first time in decades. He see...

I recently watched The Founder with Michael Keaton. I enjoyed the film. It’s an interesting character study and does a good job of...

Center Point will publish a hard bound, large print version of Crossing the Animas , A Steve Dancy Tale . They’re a great group of pe...

Recently I tweeted an article I wrote about the Old West. Many people have weighed in on what the American frontier was really about. I thi...

Book covers are a big deal. People really do judge a book by its cover. The Steve Dancy Tales always use black and white photos with o...

Mitchell Corn Palace We recently moved from Arizona to Omaha and are still getting to know the neighborhood. Friends—and sometime relat...

Hollywood doesn’t like Westerns. They keep trying to make them into something else. If a traditional Western is a success, like Unfo...

I was never a fan of signing cowboys. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and lesser lights were too goody two-shoes for me. I categorize heroes as w...

I like westerns and I like Quentin Tarantino films, so I had high expectation when I rented The Hateful Eight . Bummer. It's not ...

I believe Mark Twain is the greatest western writer of all time. Not only did Tom and Huck live on the frontier, but Roughing It des...

I read that railroad construction is all the rage in Western novels. I suppose Hell on Wheels spiked the popularity of trains, but I ...

Historic U.S. Route 395 For my birthday we ran up from San Diego to Gardnerville, Nevada. We stopped overnight in Santa Clarita to pi...

The Shopkeeper has been selected by Shelfbuzz  as a featured book based on the cover design.

Me striking a Steve Dancy pose. Recently I changed my Facebook profile picture to me as a youngster dressed up in my new chaps. The...

Looking the Part I'm not a hat person. Although I own dozens of hats, I seldom wear one. I don't even like helmets. I grew up ...

Huff Post Travel listed 5 Old West saloons everyone should visit before they die . This is a fine list of old establishments, but they miss...

The first two novels in the Steve Dancy Tales were narrated by Rusty Nelson. I hope you’ve had the opportunity to listen to Rusty’s e...

Mark Bonner edits great tributes to western films. Previously, I posted his video, Westerns Forever . As an amateur film maker, I know these...

Will Rogers died at fifty-five in an airplane crash 80 years ago (August 15, 1935). A real Oklahoma cowboy who parlayed dead pan humor i...

Pioneer Courage Park, Omaha Nebraska Amy Athey McDonald has published an article in Yale News titled: On gunfights, U.S. colonialism, ...