Building on Jean Johnson's work, The Cowboy Legend details the evidence that Everett Johnson was the prime inspiration for Wister's cowboy. With an impressive range of scholarship and archival research, Jennings melds this realistic study of the cowboy frontier with an intriguing account of Wister's creation of the cowboy mystique.

John Jennings is a retired associate professor in the Department of History at Trent University, former member of the Canadian Equestrian Team, and currently the member for Ontario on the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. He has written extensively on the North West Mounted Police, Aboriginal-European relations in the Canadian and American wests, and the role of the canoe in Canadian history and culture.