Cattle Kingdom

April 17, 2017
America’s Wild West is popularly remembered for its hard-drinking cowboys, “bat wing saloon doors,” and quick-draw gunfights, but Knowlton, former London bureau chief of Fortune magazine, triumphantly upends such familiar images. He describes life in the Wild West instead as a much richer and more diverse experience, where the hardships Westerners had to endure for the good of the cattle temporarily blended cultures and classes. Knowlton ties his narrative together by following a few historic figures from the inception of cowboy culture to its barbed-wire-induced death knell, sprinkling in lively stories about the birth of cattle towns and herds spooked by thieves. Englishman Moreton Frewen, Frenchman Marquis de Mores, and American Theodore Roosevelt represent for Knowlton the “cowboy aristocrats” whose optimistic and naïve leaps into ranching resulted in ruin for the first two and transformed the third into the future “conservation president.” Excerpts from trail driver Teddy Blue Abbott’s autobiography provide a cowboy’s perspective, demonstrating Abbott’s cheeky antics, well-founded self-confidence, and numerous life-threatening experiences. Knowlton’s quality book would be even stronger with more accounts from the cowhands, particularly from former Confederates fleeing the South or liberated slaves looking for pay equality. Knowlton’s absorbing work demonstrates that the years of lucrative cattle driving may have been short, but meatpacking and transportation innovations and the rugged individualist ideology of the West maintain their place of importance in American life. Agent: Jeff Ourvan, Jennifer Lyons Literary.

March 15, 2017
History of the boom-and-bust cycles of the cattle industry in the wildest days of the Wild West.Former Fortune magazine London bureau chief Knowlton knows a good business story when he sees it, and if the business of America is business, the nation's business of the late 19th century was conquering the frontier and converting it into a feedlot and granary. The open-range cattle scramble lasted only a few decades, but it gave the larger world the stereotype of the cowboy as a -curious blend of American everyman and chivalrous Victorian nobleman,- with a hint of crusading knight thrown in for good measure. Among the figures who populate the author's set pieces are Teddy Blue, who came as close to that ideal cowboy as anyone on the prairie, and the well-studied Teddy Roosevelt, who sought to expand his fortune as a rancher on the Dakota plains. Knowlton moves dutifully from topic to topic, from the technological developments of wire fencing here to the makings of sonofabitch stew there, enough to satisfy readers with a passing interest in the Old West but only wet the whistles of buffs. Readers raised on the revisionist histories of Richard White and Patricia Nelson Limerick may find Knowlton's emphasis on Anglo cattle barons and necktie parties a little old-fashioned. The author's background in finance comes in handy when he turns to the economics of cattle, perhaps the best single aspect of the book: -The price of shares in existing cattle companies declined sharply,- he writes of one episode involving protectionist legislation, -making it impossible for new cattle syndicates to be formed or for existing ones to make more money.- Knowlton's account of the so-called Johnson County War, pitting big business against small -nesters- in Wyoming, is excellent, a story complete enough to make a book within a book. Though without the encompassing narrative fire of a Stegner or McMurtry, a pleasing contribution to the history of the post-Civil War frontier.

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May 1, 2017

Knowlton, former staff writer and London bureau chief for Fortune, offers a fresh look at the U.S. cattle industry, with an emphasis on its financial aspects, especially as it exemplifies the boom-and-bust cycle of business. The author details a wide variety of topics, including the birth of cattle towns along the railroad, demand for beef in eastern cities, cattle drives from Texas to Kansas along with the Chicago stockyards, and the growth of business centers such as Cheyenne, WY. He also touches upon cowboys, homesteaders, rustlers, vigilantes, foreign investors, the winter of 1886 (known as the "big die-off"), and myths of the Old West. Colorful, larger-than-life personalities are featured throughout: Teddy Blue Abbott, Theodore Roosevelt, Moreton Frewen, and the Marquis de Mores. Knowlton includes almost every known fact and story about the cattle frontier, drawing upon standard primary and secondary sources. The major contribution of this volume is the author's financial perspective, thus emphasizing the speculative aspects of the range cattle industry during the Gilded Age. VERDICT This vastly informative volume will be of interest to general readers and a welcome addition for all library collections.--Patricia Ann Owens, formerly at Illinois Eastern Community Coll., Mt. Carmel

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