Regional books of interest for April: American Dude Ranch by Lynn Downey (University of Oklahoma Press) “American Dude Ranch,” by Lynn Downey (University of Oklahoma) Nothing embodies the life of the Old West more than the dude ranch. Over the years, Hollywood stars such as Bela Lugosi and Gary Cooper (a real cowboy) to the Rockefellers flocked to these guest ranches to live the cowboy life, riding horses and hunting and fishing — or, in the case of Ernest Hemingway, finishing a novel. In her highly entertaining and fact-filled “American Dude Ranch,” Lynn Downey, a former historian at Levi Strauss & Co., gives a cultural history of the dude ranch phenomenon. The first dudes and dudines (sorry, that’s what they’re called) might have been surrogate hands, but ranchers quicky realized there was money to be made in hosting well-paying guests.