SOURCE: A review of Reed Anthony, Cowman: An Autobiography, in The Nation, Vol. LXXXV, No. 2192, July 4, 1907, p. 16.

[In the following excerpt, the reviewer faults Reed Anthony, Cowman for its lack of compelling action but praises Adams's ingenuousness.]

Taking "Reed Anthony" to be Andy Adams himself, we suppose [Reed Anthony, Cowman: An Autobiography] to be simply a further chapter in autobiography. His earlier books about the life of the cowboy and the cattleman have been widely read, not, we suppose, because they are particularly good books, but because they have to do with a picturesque and passing type of American experience. The cowboy and the miner, with the old Southern gentlemen, very nearly exhaust our slender romantic treasure, and we naturally make the most of every direct manifestation of them in literature. But Mr. Adams hardly does for the plains what Mr. Bullen and Mr. Conrad have done for...