Today's American Economy Can Trace Its Roots to ​Yesteryear's Cattle Barons   The real Old West – not the Hollywood version – was quite different than the one most of us have been taught.   Even us ranchers and rural producers will be surprised by the intimate view and almost tactical sense of what it was really like in the 19th Century to be a cowboy that can be found in the book, Cattle Kingdom: The Hidden History of the Cowboy West.