Rating: 
Summary: Ten star gem
Review: Coming from the West and a family of ranchers I was interested in reading this book while listening to Justice O'Connors brother being interviewed. And the book doesn't disappoint. I love hearing what the life of someone I admire was like as a child, since it usually tells me a lot about character development.And being homeschoolers I had often heard Justice O'Connor name come up when taking about as famous homeschoolers. Alas this isn't true as she notes on page 115 "Except for one year, my school days were in El Paso. When Mo and Da decided I was old enough to travel alone on the train, they would drive to Lordsburg to meet the eastbound Southern Pacific train to El Paso. ............ In the early grades my cousin Flournoy also lived with our Wilkey grandparents bungalow in El Paso. Flournoy and I attended the local public school until fourth grade. Then Flournoy's mother remarried and the new family moved to Corpus Christi, Texas. ........... My parents decided to send me to Radford School for Girls in El Paso. They thought I would receive a better education there. Grandmother drove me to Radford every day. ..... The friends I made at Radford are my friends to this day." When she was ready to enter the eight grade she was allowed to attend public school again. I also loved reading about the land rights struggle the ranchers had in chapter 24 and how the Taylor grazing Act came about, which opened federal lands in Arizona and New Mexico to anyone without payment of a fee and without supervision. The authors are honest in discussing the problems this caused with erosion, and how the roads were built with little planning or thought about flood control etc. And the fact that the Lazy B ranch was in the drainage basin of the Gila River. And the railroads ran for miles across the ranch property and that the railroads built levees and other means to keep water from the tracks and in doing so this damaged the grass the cattle would need. And the photographs and side notes of the family thru the generations make this a special treat of a book. I love this book! And would recommend it to both men and women who value the frontier spirit and appreciate the lessons one learns in working a ranch during good and bad times.
Rating:
Summary: From the Southwest to the Supreme Court
Review: Despite her status as the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court and her background as a Stanford graduate and prominent lawyer, Sandra Day O'Connor was not--repeat NOT--a child of privilege. Granted her Daddy ran a cattle ranch spanning two states and she never really wanted for anything, but the childhood which she relates (with her co-author, brother Alan) in "Lazy B" was a most challenging, liberating, independence-building one indeed. Her grandparents started this life and her parents took over--running a huge cattle ranch, raising three children and instilling traditional values of frugality, self-reliance and hard work. We learn about her dad, DA; her mom, MO; and several interesting, independent cowboys, among them Rastus, Jim Brister, Bug Quinn and Claude Tipets. Just names in a review, these lonely, uneducated, but remarkable men take on real life--real cowboys in the twentieth century! Here's an example: Brister, to tame an unruly horse, wrestles it to the ground in a display of awesome strength--while sitting on its back!! Sandra accompanies her dad on his treks around the huge ranch fixing windmills, rounding up cattle, fixing fences, and, in general, doing the work of the ranch. She is an important part in the running of the ranch. Her father barely acknwledges her when she is late delivering lunch to the men working far from the homestead--despte the fact that she has had to change a flat tire on the ancient truck with its frozen lugnuts all by herself. The book stays focused on her childhood, her family and the ranch. We learn about her adult life, including her appointment to the Supreme Court in just a few pages. At first I was surprised at such a cursory treatment of such an important career. But in learning about her childhood upbringing on the Lazy B we really learn all about the adult Sandra Day O'Connor. This is an interesting read both as biography and as the evocation of a vanished time and place. I recommend it highly.
Rating:
Summary: Only the B was Lazy
Review: Growing up in a city, I always wondered during car trips through ranchland how the people there lived. Was it a hard life? Lonely? Were they like us in the city? I knew from movies and TV that calves in pastures were grown into large steers through a gradual process of fistfighting and gunslinging, with the cowboys taking frequent breaks to drink whiskey and play poker. But that was only part of the story. What role did the women and children play? Why the windmills? Who provided basic services? All these questions and more have now been answered by a Supreme Court Justice, of all things. Lazy B is Sandra Day O'Connor's memoir of her girlhood on a ranch in the desert Southwest. The simple unaffected style of her writing is just right to convey the power of the story: a family living on a desolate ranch for 113 years--a happy family, a resourceful and persistent family. The Day ranch had already been operating for 50 years when Sandra was born in 1930, and was still going strong when she was appointed to the high court 51 years later. The Days didn't have hot running water until 1937, but when they did it was from a solar heater designed by Sandra's father--40 years ahead of the solar energy craze of the 1970s. That sort of self reliance and innovation is one of the main themes of the book: when they needed more water they built windmills to bring it up out of the ground. When the windmills broke, they fixed them. Before the windmills and solar heater, the limited hot water for bathing was used in sequence: first Sandra's mother, then her father, then the children, then the ranch hands, if they had any interest in the water that remained. Not a cushy life, but several of the cowboys liked it enough to stay at Lazy B for over 50 years. The self-reliance in the area of first aid is even more striking: Sandra's father successfully mending the uterus of a cow with a wine bottle and some stitches; one of the cowhands giving himself a root canal with red hot baling wire, or taping his broken finger to a nail so he could keep working. And while all of them--Mom,Dad,kids,cowhands--did whatever they had to do to keep working, O'Connor's memories are overwhelmingly happy ones of card games and wild animal pets and riding through the desert and, more than anything else, conversations. One gets the impression that no one ever had a better childhood. O'Connor may or may not be a great justice--I don't know much about the law--but it seems to me that she was a part of something great long before she ever got a law degree. A happy family and a solvent ranch are two things which are hard to maintain for more than a dozen years. The Days did it for a dozen plus a year and a century. Looking at the picture on page 257, I see the very bedrock of the country.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully captures a bygone era of the American Southwest
Review: I loved reading this beautiful, gritty account of the remote Arizona cattle ranch where O'Connor and her brother grew up. The book is a portrait of the Lazy B ranch and the family and cowboys who created and sustained it for over a century. O'Connor's account is unromantized and yet touching, and it succeeds in vividly revealing a bygone way of life from the old West. We see the daily rhythms and activities of ranch life, the ongoing struggles of the Day family to keep the ranch afloat, and portraits of the colorful, rugged cowboys who worked at the Lazy B for most of their lives. And we hear the perspectives and fond recollections of the young girl (O'Connor) and her brother who grew up there. If you are drawn to the West, you'll enjoy this book as much as I did.
Rating:
Summary: Vanished way of life
Review: I loved this book for 3 reasons: 1.because it describes a vanishing way of life that most of us can only imagine, (although I spent most of my childhood planning to run away & join a cattle ranch);2. the Lazy B Ranch is located only a few miles from the fictitious setting of my favourite Zane Grey novel "Majesty's Rancho" & covers some of the same time period (1930's);3. because there are parallels (though an entirely different culture)to my mothers life growing up on a Northern Ontario farm in the 1920's & 30's the details of which I have been recently recording while mother is still alive.
Rating:
Summary: Loved the audio version of this book!
Review: I thought the audio version of this book was excellent. For one, it is narrated by Justice O'Connor herself. As a result, one hears about her life on the ranch and her personal reading delivers not only the story but also the emotions/feelings she has for the Lazy B, her family and lifetime memories. Second, I have visited ranches in the area of the Lazy B and Alan Day and Sandra Day O'Connor have described the likeness of the southwest to perfection. Bravo! A great read! Better yet, listen to the book for an even greater fulfulling experience.
EMI - California
Rating:
Summary: Good choice Ronnie.
Review: Sandra Day O'Connor and Alan Day have written a autobiography that reads like a saga. In the first chapter we learn about the Lazy B. Judging by the size of the Lazy B, 15 miles by 16 miles, I'd venture to guess this is where the term "spread" originated. Not only do we learn the Lazy B encompassed most of the State of Arizona but that it was founded on historic land that was part of the Gadsden Purchase. In Chapter two we meet Pa Day. Day, a hard working hands-on cattle rancher and shrewd businessman, begrudgingly shot 800 head of cattle in order to keep the ranch solvent. In other chapters we meet Ma Day, along with a number of the colorful ranch hands, and even some of the family pets. The book is loaded with photos of the Day family, the ranch, the livestock, and the ranch hands. After reading "Lazy B..." I felt fortunate to have read this firsthand account of the life of a woman who will someday find her way into our history books. This is the story of a woman who became one of the most powerful women in America. I now know why President Ronald Reagan was so very impressed with Sandra Day O'Connor; appointing her to serve as the first woman justice to the United States Supreme Court. Highly recommended for readers of all ages. Cammy Diaz
Rating:
Summary: Oh to be at Lazy B....
Review: Sandra Day O'Connor and Alan Day have written a book that portrays ranch life in a desolte area of Arizona and New Mexico so vividly that the reader is swept away to a place and time that can be visited only through reading the Day's memoirs. Most people know little of southwestern ranch life except as presented through Hollywood's interpretation on the silver screen. "Lazy B" reveals the every day struggles of ranchers and cowboys, with intimate knowledge of and compassion for the characters, the cattle and for the land. The authors share what it was like to grow up on a ranch far from a paved road and without neighbors or playmates. Some of the antics are side-splitters. The hard work and uncertainties of life on the ranch are told in a way that touches the reader's sensitivities. It was hard to put "Lazy B" down while reading it and I was sad when I finished it; it was something joyful and heart-warming to look forward to every evening. I heartily recommend "Lasy B" for its marvelous stories, its historical value, its humor and the strength of character it presents. One of our country's most prominent women and her brother have given us a wonderful gift by sharing their lives in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fascinating Memoir
Review: Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor and her brother, H. Alan Day, tell the story of growing up in the harsh yet beautiful land of the Lazy B Ranch in Arizona. The book is organized as a series of vignettes ranging from character sketches of the cowboys who spent their lives on the ranch to rain to the BLM. I loved this book. I first became aware of it during a trip to southern Arizona. The authors describe a way of life -- on an isolated cattle ranch -- that is almost extinct. I knew that water was important in such a land, but I didn't know that the majority of the time of the owners and employees of the ranch was spent in maintaining the wells, windmills and pumps that provided that water. I also enjoyed comparing the book to Jimmy Carter's An Hour Before Daybreak, his memoir of his childhood in rural south Georgia during a similar time period.
Rating:
Summary: A Glimpse into a Vanishing Way of Life
Review: Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor and her brother, H. Alan Day, tell the story of growing up in the harsh yet beautiful land of the Lazy B Ranch in Arizona. The book is organized as a series of vignettes ranging from character sketches of the cowboys who spent their lives on the ranch to rain to the BLM. I loved this book. I first became aware of it during a trip to southern Arizona. The authors describe a way of life -- on an isolated cattle ranch -- that is almost extinct. I knew that water was important in such a land, but I didn't know that the majority of the time of the owners and employees of the ranch was spent in maintaining the wells, windmills and pumps that provided that water.
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