The industrialization of the American West during World War II brought about rapid and far-reaching social, cultural, and economic changes. Gerald D. Nash shows that the effect of the war on that region was nothing less than explosive.

The vastness of the American West is apparent to anyone who travels through it, but what may not be immediately obvious is the extent to which the landscape has been shaped by the U.S. government. Water development projects, military bases, and Indian reservations may interrupt the wilderness vistas, but these are only an indication of the extent to which the West has become a federal landscape. Historian Gerald Nash has written the first account of the epic growth of the economy of the American West during the twentieth century, showing how national interests shaped the West over the...