Cathy Luchetti

Men of the West

With over 135 photographs, this breathtaking work portrays the men who explored and staked claim to the frontier.

The lure of adventure and riches brought men west. Some had dreams of a quick gold strike and an easy retirement. Some were explorers drawn to this vast land. Still others were homesteaders eager to put down new roots. Many would return back east, worn out by hardship. But some found places for themselves as cowboys, ranchers, or townsmen. Cathy Luchetti, author of Women of the West (over 100,000 copies sold), captures the great upheaval of being a pioneer as well as the process of settling in. She uses the words of the men themselves, taken from letters, diaries, and memoirs—not only the iconic cowboys of our imagination but also the doctors, teachers, and ministers. She captures the frontiersmen from the East and the Native Americans whose lives were changed forever by their arrival. 139 b/w photographs.

"This book made me feel like I was grabbing a handful of dirt and smelling it, squeezing it for its kind of wet or dry. Its storybook tale is an adventure of myth and legend, charting a land I've loved wandering all my life. It rolls easy like a great movie and confirms what is like some whispered, family memory."—Dagoberto Gilb, Pen/Hemingway Award winner and author of The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuna)

"Men of the West is an excellent complement to Cathy Luchetti's two books on women and children in the West—the settler's West, that is. I thoroughly enjoyed it."—Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove