Drive any highway from Austin to El Paso, and you'll find the Texas of the imagination. When the towns string out like barbs on a wire fence and the cattle outnumber the cowboys, stop and you're there. Squint in the sun's glare, rest your eyes in the shade of a mesquite. Feel the day's heat and the southwest wind that cools your skin. Breathe in the good smell of earth, and listen to the lowing of the drowsy cows. This is the Texas of dreams.

And when you can't go there, open this book. Burton Pritzker has sojourned in the Texas of dreams and brought it all back in these evocative, black-and-white photographs. In making pictures of those most Texan of icons—cows, bulls, and steers—Pritzker captures whole moments in time and place with all their play of forms, textures, and light. In his cattle, you'll find sweetness, fragility, bravado, strength, and monumentality—the underlying essence of Texas itself. Accompanying the photos is a running commentary that blends the voices of many Texans looking at the images into a single voice telling stories of ranch life, of working with cattle, and of learning to see the realm of dreams in the everyday world around us.