James D. Best

  “The fascination that the Old West has will never die." John Wayne The mythology of the Old West has been denigrated by the people wh...

Last post I wrote that Mark Twain, Owen Wister and Wells Drury portrayed Westerners as particularly fond of pranks and practical jokes. Her...

The Lone Ranger has ginned up a lot of controversy. It’s not a homage to the 1950s television series, nor should it be. Reinvigorating t...

Poor, but smiling nonetheless Last month, Paul Mountjoy of Virginia wrote a snarky article for the Washington Times website titled, ...

"Branding cattle" Six cowboys branding cattle in front of a house. 1891 Last week I posted "Preserving Western cult...

Don Schimmel Photography There are many ways to preserve our Western Culture. I prefer books, of course. I have no visual or musical...

Last night I went to the Phoenix Symphony to hear Rex Allen Jr. in an Arizona Tribute . It was a great presentation that mixed movie and...

I recently ran across Cowboy Values by James P. Owen. The book looked intriguing, but when I went to buy it, I decided to start with Cow...

I was going through some research I had collected for the Steve Dancy Tales and ran across this letter from J. A. Carruth describing life ...

Frederick Faust was one of the most prolific writers of all time, publishing nearly thirty million words in his lifetime. Faust had more...

I like Tarantino movies and Westerns, so I expected to love Django Unchained .  I only liked it. It wasn’t bad; it just didn’t live up t...

Portrait of Grey at Monument Valley Zane Grey was an athlete, avid fisherman, and a lifelong philander. Grey was introverted and rem...

                      The Steve Dancy Box Set Books provide hours upon hours of entertainment. If you're looking for rousi...

The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains  by Owen Wister was one of the first mass-market bestsellers. The 1902 novel received immediate cr...

For me, there are three major elements of good western . The first is the romance of a new beginning, the second is the battle of good ver...

John Wayne was not only a great star, he was a king maker. Louis L'Amour had been selling well, but was hardly a household name prior ...

The Western Writers of America will hold their annual conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico on June 12-16, 2012. I'll be attending wi...

About a month ago, my wife and I took a road trip with some good friends through many of the Westerns states.  We visited Nevada, Utah, ...

The Shopkeeper , the first Steve Dancy Tale , started in Pickhandle Gulch, Nevada. I visited southern Nevada ghost towns researching the b...

Although I'm a western writer, I've never stayed at a dude ranch. At least not until this week, when my wife and I spent time at t...