If you want hard data on the early days of the Texas cattle industry, it's here. If you want firsthand observations about cowboy life and cowboy tales authentically retold, that's here too. There isn't much that can be said of this book that hasn't already been said by the giants of Texas history and folklore.

A. C. Greene, in his 50 Best Books on Texas: "It is charming and exciting...informal, but informed; agreeable but accurate. It is good Texas History, as well as a memoir of an intelligent, adventurous man.

Walter Prescott Webb: "There is hardly a cattleman or man connected with the beef industry that Mr. Hastings did not know."

J. Frank Dobie: "Old Gran'pa (chapter 24) is close to the best American horse story I have ever read."