Since I began serving the sport in 2015 after Endeavor acquired PBR, I’ve been the proverbial kid in the candy store, itching to figure out a bull riding book. In my PR role with PBR, I found myself surrounded by horned cattle and guys named Cody and Chase, taking it all in, wide eyed and curious, filling notebooks with cowboy quotes and wild anecdotes. I’m the least qualified person to write about bull riding, but maybe a good choice for casting fresh eyes on a very colorful and unfamiliar scene. I’m a New Yorker who rides a subway instead of a horse. Here’s more about an ambitious labor of love that manages to be both reverent and irreverent on the same pages. PBR is a traveling circus of sorts, and Giangola, a former Fordham classmate who I have called one of the best storytellers in sports, takes us on a fast-moving trip with a colorful cast of characters, portrayed as a pioneering family who were first to face down the daunting challenge of successfully holding live events when we’re supposed to be avoiding crowds.

The book is as much about “Western values” as the beautiful yet brutal sport of bull riding. Love & Try: Stories of Gratitude and Grit from Professional Bull Riding is an entertaining and at times poetic dive into a 29-year-old sport that will expand next month from strictly individual competition to add a new bull riding team league taking place July to November. The exec who oversees PR for PBR (Professional Bull Riders) from an Endeavor office in New York, Andrew Giangola, has just released a new book that bucks the inherent challenges of sanitized prose, offering a vivid, often surprising insider’s take on the sport he helps promote. Sports books written by league executives can be interesting and illuminating but also risk being safe, watered down, and predictable.

Raising bulls for bull riding