"Laegreid offers an interesting case study of how some women negotiated the boundaries of gender and sometimes even race within the mythic US West."—Choice "Laegreid does a solid job of presenting the rodeo queens, often the daughters or friends of influential white families, as a force, if only briefly, in the emergence of community. . . . Riding Pretty pushes readers to consider unusual questions about western women and the choices some of them made for carving a space within the world of rodeo."—Anne M. Butler, Oregon Historical Quarterly"This book fills an important place in the growing field of rodeo studies, a subfield of western history pursued by historians, economists, cultural anthropologists, folklorists, and gender and sports studies scholars. Renee M. Laegreid has produced a well-written, well-documented history."—Michael Allen, Journal of American History