My dear mother-in-law used to chide me, "Honey, your cowgirl side is showing." Growing up in Oklahoma, I remember when the rodeo finals came to town, and it was full of stringy cowboys, people in chaps and big hats, beautiful horses, and the ugliest bulls I'd ever seen. I'd never heard of the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale, but boy, did I ever learn about it here. Miles City is in southeastern Montana, a place with lots of wide spaces and big ranches. The Sale originally started in 1951 as a way for ranchers to sell off their "spoiled" horses -- the ones that were too wild to be trained to use as working ranch stock. Over the years, it developed into a Western cultural event centered around various rodeo contests, and always a sale of horses now bred to buck and be part of the rodeo circuit. Collard uses his own photographs of Montana's scenery as well as historical photographs from universities and museums to take readers visually through the history of Miles City and the region, explain different rodeo contests and cowboy gear, and show how this is a family and community event. I liked how he included famous women rodeo champions who participated over the years, as well as how the fortunes of Miles City rose and fell, and now are on the rise again. I'm also a sucker for book designers who use maps as endpapers! Enjoyable to read and browse through, especially for our Connecticut Yankee kids who may not ever have seen a rodeo, and also great to share with a younger sibling who's doing that states report on Montana... ( )