author

John R. Cook

1844–1917

A Civil War veteran, buffalo hunter, and frontier storyteller, he wrote from firsthand experience of the American West. His best-known book, The Border and the Buffalo, blends memoir, history, and adventure in a vivid account of life on the plains.

1 Audiobook

The Border and the Buffalo: An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains The Bloody Border of Missouri and Kansas. The Story of the Slaughter of the Buffalo. Westward among the Big Game and Wild Tribes. A Story of Mountain and Plain

The Border and the Buffalo: An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains The Bloody Border of Missouri and Kansas. The Story of the Slaughter of the Buffalo. Westward among the Big Game and Wild Tribes. A Story of Mountain and Plain

by John R. Cook

About the author

Born in Mount Gilead, Ohio, on December 19, 1844, he moved with his family to Kansas while still young and later served in the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, he spent time on the southwestern plains as a hunter and frontiersman, experiences that would shape his writing.

Cook is best remembered for The Border and the Buffalo, first published in 1907. The book draws on his own memories of border fighting, buffalo hunting, and travel in the West, and it has remained of interest to readers looking for a firsthand narrative of that era.

He died on August 9, 1917. Though not a widely known literary figure today, his work endures as a lively personal record of the frontier and the dramatic changes that transformed it.