Saddle Up with a Western

Old West fiction and nonfiction are the perfect genres to fill your summer reading list.

- STUART ROSEBROOK

Every season is a good season to read, but summer is when we all plan to enjoy some good reading while on vacation or at home. Turn off the TV, laptop and phone; maybe put on some good music-or not-and just sit back and relax with a new book or classic that you've wanted to read for a long time.

Across the United States, Western publishers work hard every year to produce deep lists of new fiction and nonfiction as well as reprints and reissues of classics-in time for summer readers.

The following list of recommended Western books is dominated by new releases from this year, but it also includes recommendations on classics that everyone should have on their to-read list. Why not start now and create your very own ultimate Old West reading list?

Western Nonfiction

For the past decade, Western fiction has been on a wild ride. We have seen a lot of changes in the marketplace, with fewer titles published on the 19th-century West. With the Roaring Twenties currently marking its centennial and the Great Depression not too far behind, publishers have rightfully been asking their authors to extend their research farther and farther into the 20th-, and even the 21st-century. This isn't because of a lack of material to still research and write about the 19th-century West, but because editors and publishers want to provide greater context and relevancy to the present consumers, whose parents and grandparents (even great-grandparents) were alive while the history was happening. Two good examples of this are the mining history books reviewed on page 52, Tombstone Mystique and Crosses of Iron, which begin their narratives in the 19th century but conclude in the present day.

The following are 15 recently published Western history books I recommend for your summer reading pleasure.