Cowboy Politics is an immensely learned volume that distills a lifetime of study, thinking, reading and viewing into fascinating analyses of novels by Owen Wister, Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour and Larry McMurtry, films such as Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992), and also television programs such as Deadwood (2004-6). . . . Cowboy Politics stands as an important piece of cultural and political theorizing. But the main contribution of the work for me is pedagogical. In this study, John Nelson has made an important and convincing case for the inclusion of westerns as worthy lenses onto the history of political theory and the emerging politics of the early twenty first century.

VoegelinView

[Nelson's book is ] worth reading for any scholar of American Studies, Film Studies and political science.

Popcultureshelf.com

Nelson argues that literature, films, and TV shows about the American West reveal deep aspects of The West as a civilization. The result is full of surprising insights into both his fictional material, and the nature and sources of our common culture.

Charles T. Rubin, Duquesne University

In this encyclopedic study of political myth-making in the genre of Westerns, John Nelson provides a range of tools, questions, and themes for students of political theory to deploy while watching, engaging, and teaching films. Westerns turn out to be an extraordinary font of narratives, rhetorical strategies, and images about American political life when illuminated by Nelson’s probing questions and analysis. As with Nelson’s earlier forays into various noirs, horror, and science fiction, Cowboy Politics is a stunning intellectual achievement that braids the history of cinema with political history and theory in a lucid style that deepens (without diluting) the fun of watching and discussing the films in question.

Christopher C. Robinson, Clarkson University

In Cowboy Politics, John Nelson explores how popular Westerns are a key site for grappling with contemporary political dilemmas. With intriguing examples and humor, Cowboy Politics shows how Westerns point beyond modernity, mixing liberalism with republicanism, and grappling with environmental, feminist, populist and authoritarian challenges. Theorizing in the style of Hannah Arendt, Nelson demonstrates the potential moves that Westerns offer us—responsibility, speech, forgiveness—in facing the political questions of our own times.

Linda Beail, Point Loma Nazarene University