HOT READ
MAY 8, 2008

“Cowboy Ethics,”
by James P. Owen, photography by David R. Stoecklein, Stoecklein Publishing & Photography, $25

The author, a veteran investment manager, knew there had to be an answer to his industry’s ethically challenged behavior. So, he turned to his love of the American cowboy and realized that the code of the open range can be paired with modern times. Framed by photography, he created a book that pays homage to our heritage.

What he found inside a cowboy’s makeup was loyalty and honor, and quiet strength is not just a 19th century notion. “To me, the fundamental problem is that we have confused rules with principles,” James P. Owen writes. “Rules can always be bent, but principles cannot.” Imagine how integrity and character matter more than billable hours.

In his research, Owen could not find a written-down code of cowboy ethics, so he created from history 10 principles that applied then, and still apply today.

If cowboys were able to drive 8 million heads of cattle during the mid-1860s into the 1880s, you ought to be able to push the pencil in the right direction.

— Craig Reem