35 outstanding Westerns, from James Frederic Remington to Rick Bass

The Western is one of the great genres of world literature - singularly American, but with a truly global readership.

Ever since James Fenimore Cooper transformed frontier yarns into a distinct literary form, the Western has followed two paths: one populist - Time magazine's American Morality Play - able to fit any political philosophy from red to redneck, with a sentimental attachment to the misfit; the other literary - eschewing heroism and debunking many of the myths of the West.

It can sometimes be difficult to draw a sure line between the two forms, but the best of both are represented in this excellent collection which includes stories by Willa Cather, Stephen Crane, Hamlin Garland, A. B. Guthrie, O. Henry, William Kittredge, Mari Sandoz, Leslie Marmon Silko and Wallace Stegner, among many others.