The term "Wild West" brings to mind certain images: cowboys, settlers, gunfights, and outlaws. But the American West wasn't always as wild as popular images and stories often suggest. Its famous heroes were sometimes its villains or vice versa. In this informative volume, young readers will learn facts that bust the myths of the Old West, bringing a more realistic and diverse angle to tales of cowboys and Indians repeated in books, television shows, and movies throughout the years.

$6.95 paper · 1-58685-191-8 4˘ x 6 ◊ in, 96 pp, Line Illustrations Throughout, Rights: W, Western Humor A western humor classic is back! Hats & the Cowboys Who Wear Them, by celebrated western humorist Texas Bix Bender, reveals in hilarious detail the personality profiles of the cowfolk underneath their hats. In fact, Bender cautions, choosing a cowboy hat should be done with much care because it tells just exactly who you are. The manwho wears a Cattleman's style, for instance, "likes to sing in the shower, in his truck and under women's balconies. He hopes to get a recordin' contract. After all, George Strait wears a Cattleman, and look what it did for him." Bender covers forty other traditional cowboy hat designs, imparting similar jewels of western-tinged wisdom for each. He also takes care to rope in all the trimmings, addressing hatbands, feathers, and the dangers of "hat hair" in this laugh-out-loud little book. Revised with all-new illustrations, Hats & the Cowboys Who Wear Them is one more uproarious volume from a sure-selling humorist. Texas Bix Bender is the author of Gibbs Smith, Publisher's "Don't Squat . . ." series of books. Now a million-selling author, he has worked as a writer for television. He lives just outside Nashville, Tennessee.

Henry Ward Beecher said "the common sense of one century is the common sense of the next." That said, these pocket-sized humor books pack quite a bit of punch-lines that is. With more than 1.5 million copies in print, their all-new look will leave a whole new generation in stitches!

Never mind the Real Housewives of Orange County—Marla Jo Fisher is the woman everyone can relate to, complete with bad parenting, rotten dogs, ill health, and fashion faux pas. For nearly two decades, in the Orange County Register and many syndicated papers, readers have delighted in Marla Jo’s subversive humor, cranky intellect, and huge heart on her journey through broke, single, after-40 motherhood, when she adopted Cheetah Boy and Curly Girl, to her oddball adventures around the globe, to the sublime ridiculousness of life next door. Even while facing a devastating diagnosis, Fisher teaches us that humor is the balm that eases and the very thing that binds us together.

Although Swift Montana Smith's book entitled READ MY SHORTS is mostly about Cowboy Action Shooting and his personal experiences within the sport, there are also stories about the Wild West included within. The book is split into two parts with the first part being short stories that can be read in less than an hour; having said that, the eighteen stories listed in Part One will take several hours to read. The addition of the longer, short story in Part Two of the book about a Wild West character called Edgar Windfal is a pleasant narrative and very interesting. While some of the stories appear to be actual experiences, many of them are fictional in nature and have a comedic tone and are meant to be amusing. A few of the stories are serious and emotional; including the last one entitled Edgar Windfal - The Lucky Stone. Overall, the book is easy to read and very enjoyable.

A collection of Courtney's columns from the Texas Monthly, curing the curious, exorcizing bedevilment, and orienting the disoriented, advising "on such things as: Is it wrong to wear your football team's jersey to church? When out at a dancehall, do you need to stick with the one that brung ya? Is it real Tex-Mex if it's served with a side of black beans? Can one have too many Texas-themed tattoos?"--Amazon.com.

Dick Coler is not only a cowboy at heart but most of his youth was spent as a working cowboy on ranches throughout the West, prior to and after his tour of duty with the U.S.Marines. Some of his experiences are shared in these chapters.

Confessions of a Horseshoer offers a close and personal look at the mind-set of a professional horseshoer (farrier) who also happens to be a college professor. The book, an ironic and playful view of the many unusual animals (and people) Ron Tatum has encountered over thirty-seven years, is nicely balanced between straightforward presentation, self-effacing humor, and lightly seasoned wisdom. It captures the day-to-day life of a somewhat cantankerous old guy, who has attitude and strong opinions. Throughout the book, Tatum ponders the causes that led him into the apparently opposing worlds of horseshoeing, with its mud, pain, and danger, and the bookish life of a college professor. He tells the reader that it is his hope that writing the book will help him understand this apparent paradox between the physical and the mental. Tatum provides a detailed description of the horseshoeing process, its history, and why horses need shoes in the first place. The reader will learn about the dangers of shoeing horses in “Injuries I Have Known,” in which Tatum describes one particular self-inflicted injury that he claims no other horseshoer has ever, or will ever, experience. “Eight Week Syndrome” demonstrates the close, often therapeutic, relationship between the horseshoer and his or her customers. Tatum relates the story of an old Wyoming cowboy who could talk with horses, and consistently cure their injuries, lameness, and other physical problems after the veterinarians had given up. The humor in the chapters on chickens and rabbits will entertain any reader, as well as the sections on various dogs, ducks, llamas, goats, flies, and a sexually disoriented pig. Readers of western life and lovers of horses will find Confessions of a Horseshoer an informative, quirky, and delightful work full of humor, attitude, and off-beat insight.

Comedian Mike Birbiglia’shilarious New York Times bestseller is now a major motion picture co-written and produced by Ira Glass (This American Life) starring Birbiglia and Emmy-nominated actress Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under). Finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor Sleepwalk with Me is a comedic memoir, but I’m only thirty-two years old, so I’d hate for you to think I’m “wrapping it up,” so to speak. But I tell some really personal stories. Stories that I considered not publishing time and time again—about my childhood, about girls I made out with when I was thirteen, about my parents, and, of course, about my bouts with sleepwalking. Bring this book to bed. And sleepwalk with me.

John Wayne worked on film sets around the globe. This book follows the trail, from his beginnings on the Fox backlot to his final filming in Lone Pine, California. Locations in Mexico, Normandy, Rome, Madrid, London, Ireland, Libya and Africa are covered, along with his favorite vacation spots in Hawaii, Acapulco, Greece, Monaco, and the Hollywood hot-spots he frequented. Anecdotes revisit his most famous scenes, including Rooster Cogburn's charge in True Grit (1969) and Davy Crockett's last stand in The Alamo (1960). Production details describe how San Diego stood in for Iwo Jima, how Old Tucson was turned into El Dorado, and how Genghis Kahn ruled over the deserts of Utah. Never before published photos present then-and-now views in this first of its kind guided tour for film location hunters and Wayne aficionados.