Description
Book SynopsisTracing events from the pre-history to the present day, this book offers a concise and accessible history of the American West.
- Explores the complex interactions between and among cultures in the American West
- Chronologically organized and informed by the latest scholarship
- Grounded in attention to race, class, gender, and the environment, the text focuses on social, economic, and political forces that shaped the lived experiences of diverse westerners and influenced the patterns of western history.
Trade Review“With fresh insights and lively writing, this brief volume addresses major themes of culture, environment, politics, violence, and popular myth-making that shaped the American West from earliest times to the present day. By focusing on the West’s diverse peoples, women and men, Butler and Lansing underscore the fascinating complexity of this vast region that remains vital for an understanding of the United States and its history.”
Clyde A. Milner, Arkansas State University “With admirable clarity, the authors analyze the West’s diverse regions, meanings, and populations across many centuries. This is a fine, insightful book.” William Deverell, University of Southern California
“A wonderfully readable, thematically sophisticated survey of western history that draws heavily on the voluminous recent scholarship on the West to illuminate developments in race and gender relations, labor, the environment, economics and politics, and the region’s central place in the national imagination.” David Wrobel, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Table of ContentsIntroduction.
1. First Wests, Many Wests.
2. Inside Native Wests.
3. Enforcing an American West.
4. Imperial Wests.
5. A Diverse, Urban, and Federal West.
6. Mythic West and Modern West.
Suggested Readings.
Index
