The world’s bestselling cowboy poet and author of Cactus Tracks & Cowboy Philosophy is back in the saddle with a hilarious roundup of essays, commentaries, and campfire verse that speaks to the cowboy soul in each of us. “Baxter Black is Mark Twain served up with a little Groucho Marx.”—The Weekly Standard Share in the wit and wisdom of Baxter Black, public radio’s favorite former large animal veterinarian. Drawn in part from Baxter’s wildly popular NPR commentaries and syndicated columns, Horseshoes, Cowsocks & Duckfeet offers a generous helping of Baxter’s tender yet irreverent, sage-as-sagebrush take on everything from ranching, roping, Wrangler jeans, and rodeos to weddings and romance, the love of a good dog, dancing, parenting, cooking up trouble, and talking about the weather. With illustrations by noted cowboy artists Bob Black, Don Gill, Dave Holl, and Charlie Marsh and a timely foreword by historic cowboy sympathizer Herman Melville, Horseshoes, Cowsocks & Duckfeet will charm your chaps off. The collected drippings of winter’s oil change. The epic flush of the accumulated compaction of salted streets, sanded roads, gravelly snow, and frozen manure. It has its own ides. But what ides are they? I can tell you: fungicide, blindside, cyanide, vilified, terrified, stupefied, snide, hide, lied, cried, died, back you up against the wall and leave you flat and down, afoot and weak, and chapped and squinty-eyed ides.” —From “March Madness” “I have lived a fairly long time. I have been places. I have seen bears mate, boats sink, and Gila monsters scurry. I have danced till I couldn’t stand up and stood up till I couldn’t dance. I’ve eaten bugs, broccoli, and things that crawl on the seafloor. I have seen as far back as Mayan temples, as far away as Betelgeuse, and as deep down as Tom Robbins. I have been on Johnny Carson, the cover of USA Today, and fed the snakes at the Dixie Chicken. I have held things in my hand that will be here a million years beyond my own existence. Yet, on that dance floor I felt a ripple in the universe, a time warp moment when the often unspectacular human race threw its head back and howled at the moon.” —From “Cajun Dance”