Citizen Cowboy
Will Rogers and the American People

A compelling look at the life of Will Rogers and how his work helped ease Americans into the modern world.

Steven Watts (Author)

9781108495936, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 August 2024

477 pages
23.6 x 16.2 x 3.1 cm, 0.81 kg

'This study of an American icon is exceptional-well researched, written, and presented. It documents well how Will's life touched a vast number and array of fellow citizens in his day and continues to have meaning to Americans today. I congratulate the author of this fine work.' Steven Gragert, editor of The Papers of Will Rogers, Will Rogers' Weekly Articles, and Will Rogers' Daily

Citizen Cowboy is a probing biography of one of America's most influential cultural figures. Will Rogers was a youth from the Cherokee Indian Territory of Oklahoma who rose to conquer nearly every form of media and entertainment in the early twentieth century's rapidly expanding consumer society. Through vaudeville, the Ziegfeld Follies and Broadway, syndicated newspaper and magazine writing, the lecture circuit, radio, and Hollywood movies, Rogers built his reputation as a folksy humorist whose wit made him a national symbol of common sense, common decency, and common people. Though a friend of presidents, movie stars and industrial leaders, it was his bond with ordinary people that endeared him to mass audiences. Making his fellow Americans laugh and think while honoring the past and embracing the future, Rogers helped ease them into the modern world and they loved him for it.

Author's note
Introduction: Will Rogers' America
1. The final frontier
2. The Cherokee kid
3. The vaudeville romance
4. Follies and frolics
5. The celluloid cowboy
6. An age of publicity
7. The American soul
8. Politics is applesauce
9. The unfunny business of trying to be funny
10. The private man
11. The little fellow and the Great Depression
12. Man in motion
13. The man talkies were invented for
Epilogue: Thy will be done
Acknowledgements.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK]