Cattle crossed the Rio Grande into what is now the United States as early as 1580, forty years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. In this colorful and comprehensive history of the cattle industry in the American West, Paul I. Wellman reaches back to the early sixteenth century, when the first cattle were brought from Spain to Mexico. He hits his stride in describing the great cattle drives that began after the Civil War when Texans desperately needed to ex-pand their markets. Hell-bent cow towns like Abilene and Dodge City make a big noise again, and so do figures of different bents: Joseph C. McCoy, Charles Goodnight, Oliver Loving, John Chisum, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, and Billy the Kid. The coming of barbed wire and the great blizzards of 1886 and 1887 brought about dramatic changes in the cattle industry—all chronicled down to 1939, when The Trampling Herd was first published.