For young readers of all ages.

What happens when you round up twenty members of Western Writers of America, assign a couple of editors to ride herd on them, have each of them cut out a true—but little known—story from the Wild West and tell it in a way that will engage teenage readers?

You get Why Cows Need Cowboys and Other Seldom-Told Tales from the American West.

Editors Nancy Plain and Rocky Gibbons have accomplished a first in the annals of Western writing with this anthology. WWA has created other anthologies and collections over the years covering a wide range, but never before, not since its establishment in 1953, has a herd of some of America’s most accomplished Western writers pointed their pens and pencils in the direction of our youth.

Well done.

But you don’t have to be an adolescent to read and enjoy and learn from this book. Even those who are well-read in Western history will find new and entertaining incidents and episodes, people and places in these pages.

You’ll even find out why it took Earl—one of the Bronc-Bustin’ Bascom Brothers—sixty-five years to get the All-Around Cowboy trophy buckle he won at a rodeo. I know, because I got to tell that story.