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Holistic Guidance - Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West
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List Price: $25.00
Our Price: $16.50
Your Save: $ 8.50 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 599.66550978
EAN: 9780618454457
ISBN: 0618454454
Label: Houghton Mifflin
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: 2008-06-09
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Studio: Houghton Mifflin
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Editorial Reviews:
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An epic story that restores the horse to its rightful place in the history of the American West
Mustang is the sweeping story of the wild horse in the culture, history, and popular imagination of the American West. It follows the wild horse from its evolutionary origins on this continent to its return with the conquistadors to its bloody battles on the old frontier to its present plight as it fights for survival on the vanishing range.
Along the way, you meet some of the great characters -- equine and human alike -- in American history, including Comanche, the gallant horse that survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn; Charlie Joe, the intrepid cast member of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show; Fritz, the mustang that became America's first equine movie star; and Bugz, the survivor of the 1998 wild horse massacre outside Reno, Nevada. There's also Wild Horse Annie, who lobbied for the first federal protections for mustangs and, after a twenty-year fight, saw them signed into law in 1971.
In the tradition of Barry Lopez and Peter Matthiessen, Mustang follows the horse tracks across American history and shows that despite ever-encroaching civilization and dwindling protections, the horses still run wild, with spirit unbroken -- a living tableau of our heritage. But for how much longer, no one can say.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book
Comment: Mustang is written very well and follows the horses from beginning evolution to the present day. Younger readers may find it slightly boring, but I loved this amazing book. I highly recommend it.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful writer
Comment: This book does have errors. For one thing a horse cannot breathe through its mouth, only its nostrils (page 164 "his mouth wide open and sucking air" - while this does not indicate a huge error, there were other small errors noticed as well. If there are small errors, there are likely larger errors, so the other review is likely quite on the money.
Regardless, this book is worth reading. She does an excellent job of weaving a story together to give you an idea of where the horses have come from and endured.
By the same token, I am a supporter of horse slaughter and keeping wild horses within realistic numbers. While the book tells a wonderful story and chronicles the likely lives of many a Mustang, it is also written from a "horses are all beautiful" type standpoint. Some horses are just horses.
With the beauty available from Mustangs, the choice of cover surprised me, it's very mundane and not really gorgeous. Other than that, the book is good, the writing is wonderful and I'm sure that I will seek out other books by this same author now. Even with the small errors.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't Miss This one
Comment: Wild horses have become a political football in Congress, with battles between those who want to protect them and those who are all too happy to eradicate them.
Senator Conrad Burns of Montana slipped a rider into a federal appropriations bill in 2004 which ended more than 30 years of federal protection for America's wild horses. Our fearless leader--yes, the one from Texas, of all places!--signed it into law, leading to approval to their slaughter for horse meat to be sold to foreign countries where it is still eaten.
Perhaps Senator Burns and his colleagues from states where the majority of these horses are held and who voted for this bill would think differently if they read this book.
The tragic story of the American wild horse comes to life in Stillman's beautifully written book. She traces the history from being heroes to being considered surplus to requirements.
When you think about the reverence of the horse in American literature and history, that it has come to this--that politicians from states whose fortunes were built on the back of these amazing animals are the ones who voted to destroy them--will make you ashamed to call yourself an American. It's no wonder the rest of the world thinks of us as the creators of the disposable society.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Is He Kidding?
Comment: If there were any more references attached to the the Mustang Saga, Ms. Stillman would have had to write a new book just to cover them. I thought it was extremely well researched and just don't get where this guy is coming from.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Long on passion, short on facts
Comment: As a wild horse researcher and advocate, I have mixed feelings about this book. Stillman writes with passion, and her lively style keeps the pace moving. I am encouraged that the book has brought national attention back to the plight of wild horses-and it is certainly time for an update of Hope Ryden's popular and intelligent 1970 book, America's Last Wild Horses. But I don't think this is that book. Stillman's inspiration for this project was the shocking wild horse shootings in Nevada, yet she uses that incident only to "bookend" the text, never really engaging with current attitudes or explaining such behavior. Instead, she gallops off into a re-hashing of western history from the perspective of horses, making a sweeping and unsupported case that every cowboy, Indian and cavalry horse of note were former wild horses/mustangs (by her own admission, she has a hard time appreciating any difference between wild and domestic horses, and this shows throughout). The main body of the book describes these general western contexts rather than wild horses and their histories per se, and too much space is devoted to topics like the Little Big Horn battle, which are not directly relevant and have been covered much better by others. Along the way she perpetuates misconceptions and down-right errors, such as claiming that immense wild herds developed from a few horses that strayed from Spanish explorers, Comanche, the famous Seventh Cavalry mount of Myles Keogh was one of many captured mustangs used by the U.S. Army, and that Plains Indians acquired most of their horses by capturing them wild-she even quotes a "horse taking song" in support of this idea, when it refers to the practice of taking horses from enemy camps (Plains peoples got most of their horses from trading and raiding, not "gathering"). She does not indicate her sources, and I have never seen or even heard of the "Mandan legend" about ice-age horses that she "quotes" from without attribution. These are just a few examples of her focus on the "saga" at the expense of research and experience, which is important because confidence in sources provides common ground for discussion and leads to informed understanding. Bottom line: this is a "feel good" book, meant to stir appreciation for horses, and judging from reviews, it has succeeded in that-at least among receptive readers who already love horses. For those with a background in wild horse issues, this book adds little new information or original thinking to the discussion. The average reader will find it a pleasurable, perhaps heart-warming and heart-breaking ride, but don't use this book as a reference for your next term paper.
Added Later: Yes, Stillman includes a good bibliography; sorry for the misunderstanding-I meant that there is no way to figure out the source of particular statements and interpretations, such as the passage bout the about the Mandan legend. Overall I am certainly supportive of this book; it is a well-written popular treatment of an important subject; but as a specialist on wild horses and North American ethnography, and as someone who teaches anthropology and writing to college students, I could not help but notice the issues that I mentioned.
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