The Gazette

The article The Boot in Popular Culture gains two new passages, from the screen to the Oval Office. From the Western to the Screen: the "John Wayne toe" — the square toe John Wayne ordered from Lucchese in 1951, and the tan boots Clint Eastwood wore in Leone's Westerns, shot in Andalusia, Spain. The Presidential Boot: a Symbol of Identity — from Lyndon B. Johnson to George W. Bush, when the Texan boot became a political marker — right down to "BOTUS," the bootmaker who has sh

The Western Boot chapter opens its first pages. Five articles trace the birth and the transformations of an object that became an icon. The Origins of the Western Boot — how three traditions — the Mexican vaquero, the Hessian boot, and the military Wellington — converged on the same soil. The Birth of the Modern Cowboy Boot — an anonymous cowboy's order to a bootmaker in Olathe, Kansas, in 1875, and the decisive invention: the steel shank. The Founders — Justin, Hyer, Lucches

New pages have just opened in two very different series. On the dance side, the History of Western Dance series welcomes two new chapters: Clogging, Flatfooting, and Buck Dancing — the first dance born on American soil, when the foot becomes an instrument at the crossroads of four continents in the Appalachians. The Square Dance — when America danced in squares: from the European quadrille to the caller, an African American invention long erased from the official record. On t