"In Let the Cowboy Ride, Starrs offers a detailed and comprehensive look at one of America's most enduring institutions. Richly illustrated with 130 photographs and maps, the book combines the authentic detail of an insider's view (Starrs spent six years working cattle on the high desert Great Basin range) with a scholar's keen eye for objective analysis.".

"Tracing the geography and history of ranching in the United States, Starrs tells how Anglo settlers first encountered the open grasslands of the West - an environment alien to most of the European experience. Knowing little of the West's unique geography, Congress in far-off Washington enacted land-use laws better suited to the needs of Jeffersonian yeoman farmers, with idealized 160-acre plots in the Ohio Valley, than to those of cattle ranchers in the semiarid West.

Starrs describes how these laws, which made it extremely difficult for citizens to obtain the large tracts of land needed for cattle raising, soon came into conflict not only with the stern realities of Western climate but also with customs and practices of the region's Hispanic inhabitants, whose system of land grants - based on group ownership of large tracts of land - was far better suited to ranchers' needs.".

"Starrs tracks the imprint of these conflicts in shaping ranching today, from the communal ranch lands of Hispanic northern New Mexico to the private ranches of the Texas Panhandle, from the vast expanse of public domain territory in northern Nevada to the intricately structured public and private rangelands of Wyoming and the tallgrass Sandhills of Nebraska.

He explains how to "read" a ranch hand's rig - from the roll of the cantle to the form of stirrups and location of cinches - for clues to a rancher's cultural and regional origins."--BOOK JACKET.