His glory days began after the Civil War, at the start of the great traildrives. They have made h im an American phenomenon–a monument of American history, a dream of the American subconscious, an image of everything Americans like in themselves. Best of all the image and the reality still exist in the American West today. Here is the fabulous story of the cowboy past and the cowboy present, the cowboy who was an the cowboy who is.