Product Description

The Rough Guide to Westerns examines one of the cinema’s most durable, influential, genres, offering the reader an insight into its history, its place in popular culture – in America and the rest of the world, the key iconic figures both in front of the lens and behind it, and the genre’s essential movies. The guide looks at what makes a good Western, considering the seven basic Western plots, the pens behind the movies, the major historic events and their influences, and the genre's central ritual - the gunfight. There is a potted history of the Western decade-by-decade and a critical canon of the 50 greatest Westerns. From the pioneers and directors to the iconic cowboys and railroads, this guide covers it all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #98374 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 312 pages

About the Author
Paul Simpson is an experienced film critic and journalist. He is author of Rough Guides to James Bond, Cult Movies, Cult TV, Kids' Movies and Elvis

Customer Reviews

Movie Westerns Get a Great "Rough" Treatment
Author Paul Simpson follows the usual "Rough Guide" format in his contribution on "Westerns", but with some very welcome additions. For instance, he provides reasons for including certain films in his "canon" of 50 classic westerns and excluding many of the films most readers would expect to find in this list. Most of them are, of course, covered elsewhere in the book, but it is odd to see movies like "Hud", "Monte Walsh", "Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here" and "El Topo" in the selection. Simpson explains that he has "tried to show as many facets of the genre" as possible. This is all to the good, but what will disappoint many fans is that he has obviously little time for "B" westerns. If Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, William Boyd, Ken Maynard, Tim Holt, Buck Jones, Bob Steele, Charles Starrett, and George O'Brien (the last six heroes are not even mentioned) are more to your taste, you would do better with books like my own Movie Westerns: Hollywood Films the Wild, Wild West which covers many "B" movies as well as "A" classics like "The Spoilers", "Riding Shotgun", "The Mark of Zorro" and "San Antonio" which do not even rate so much as a passing reference. This "Rough Guide" has obviously aimed for the wide view rather than a more popular, if somewhat less broad approach. However, there is a limit to what you can include in 293 pages, but, within these limits, Simpson has provided a great deal of essential information.

Not perfect, but worth a read
There are many books available on the western, most of them rather dry and academic, or focused to tightly on particular actors/directors/sub-genres.

This one has the advantage of being a good "all-round" introduction to the best known works, with some good tips for lesser-known ones. Almost inevitably, somebody's favourites are sure to be missing - no "How The West Was Won"? No "Valdez Is Coming?" - but that's the nature of this type of book. There are some chapters which are (to my mind) superfluous - e.g. "foreign westerns" (which are nothing of the sort), the bibliography is woefully inadequate, and the index is full of holes.

But, that said, this was fun to read, and sent me back to many of my old favourites on DVD.