BE A MAN: Raised in the Shadow of Cowboys is a memoir with a specific focus on what it means to grow up in the West as a male. Russell Rowland is a fourth generation Montanan whose mother grew up on a cattle ranch in Southeastern Montana. In BE A MAN, Rowland explores how his upbringing and those of his parents shaped their family in terms of how to approach emotional issues like death, alcoholism, domestic violence, and general failure. Rowland also explores how the media and the history of the West create a dynamic that is hard to escape when you absorb certain mixed messages about what it means to be a man. How to treat women, how to deal with conflict, and how to find your own way through the complicated world of success and failure.