Riding Astride

Riding Astride is a study of the women of the frontier West whose extreme and sometimes even militant behavior helped break down the strict social codes of the nineteenth century and transform American culture. Historian Patricia Riley Dunlap discards the glamorized, romanticized wild and woolly West found in other portrayals, revealing the reality of the lives of frontier women. These women branded cattle, mined for gold and silver, farmed, ranched, performed in rodeos and wild west shows, worked as journalists, doctors, and attorneys--and rode horseback astride rather than sidesaddle. --From publisher's description.