The American frontier was officially closed, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1890. Yet more homesteads were settled in the first few decades of the twentieth century than in the entire nineteenth century. "Frontier anxiety," then, really was caused not by the closing of the frontier, but by the perception that the frontier was closing, argues David Wrobel. As early as the 1870s and through the 1930s, many Americans believed an important era had ended and worried about how this closure would affect society and democracy. The perceived expiration of a uniquely American way of...
The American frontier was officially closed, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1890. Yet more homesteads were settled in the first few decades o...
What does it mean to live in the West today? Do people tend to identify with states, with regions, or with the larger West? This book examines the development of regional identity in the American West, demonstrating that it is a regionally diverse entity made up of many different wests--Great Plains, Southwest, Rocky Mountains, and more--in which American regionalism finds its fullest expression. These fourteen original essays tell how a sense of place emerged among residents of various regions and how a sense of those places was developed by people outside of them. Wrobel and Steiner...
What does it mean to live in the West today? Do people tend to identify with states, with regions, or with the larger West? This book examines the dev...
You can see them cruising for Indian art in Santa Fe, waiting for Old Faithful at Yellowstone, or pausing for shrimp cocktails on San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. The American West attracts vacationers of every stripe, who comb its varied landscapes for the ultimate trip. And for better or worse, those who come to see this multifaceted region have changed what they have come to see. Seeing and Being Seen explores the history of tourism in the American West and examines its effects on both the tourists and the places and people they visit. Scholars from the humanities, social...
You can see them cruising for Indian art in Santa Fe, waiting for Old Faithful at Yellowstone, or pausing for shrimp cocktails on San Francisco's Fish...
Almost from its beginning, Nevada sanctioned behaviours considered immoral elsewhere and embraced a culture of individualism and disdain for the constraints of more conventional society. Hal Rothman focuses on the factors that shaped the state's original maverick, colonial status and those that later allowed it to emerge as the new standard of American consumerism and postmodern liberalism.
Almost from its beginning, Nevada sanctioned behaviours considered immoral elsewhere and embraced a culture of individualism and disdain for the const...
Whether seen as a land of opportunity or as paradise lost, the American West took shape in the nation's imagination with the help of those who wrote about it; but two groups who did much to shape that perception are often overlooked today. Promoters trying to lure settlers and investors to the West insisted that the frontier had already been tamed-that the only frontiers remaining were those of opportunity. Through posters, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and other printed pieces, these boosters literally imagined places into existence by depicting backwater areas as settled, culturally...
Whether seen as a land of opportunity or as paradise lost, the American West took shape in the nation's imagination with the help of those who wrote a...
Winner of the 2014 Western Heritage Award for Nonfiction from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
This thoughtful examination of a century of travel writing about the American West overturns a variety of popular and academic stereotypes. Looking at both European and American travelers' accounts of the West, from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America to William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, David Wrobel offers a counter narrative to the nation's romantic entanglement with its western past and suggests the importance of some long-overlooked authors, lively and perceptive...
Winner of the 2014 Western Heritage Award for Nonfiction from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
The American West has influenced important national developments throughout the twentieth century, not only in the cultural arena, but also in economic development, in political ideology and action, and in natural resource conservation and preservation. Using regionalism as a lens for illuminating these national trends, America's West: A History, 1890-1950 examines this region's history and explores its influence on the rest of America. Moving chronologically from the late nineteenth- to the mid-twentieth century, David M. Wrobel examines turn-of-the-century expansion, the Progressive Era,...
The American West has influenced important national developments throughout the twentieth century, not only in the cultural arena, but also in economi...
The American West has influenced important national developments throughout the twentieth century, not only in the cultural arena, but also in economic development, in political ideology and action, and in natural resource conservation and preservation. Using regionalism as a lens for illuminating these national trends, America's West: A History, 1890-1950 examines this region's history and explores its influence on the rest of America. Moving chronologically from the late nineteenth- to the mid-twentieth century, David M. Wrobel examines turn-of-the-century expansion, the Progressive Era,...
The American West has influenced important national developments throughout the twentieth century, not only in the cultural arena, but also in economi...
