A Companion to the American West (Blackwell Companions to American History)

A Companion to the American West is a rigorous, illuminating introduction to the history of the American West. Twenty-five essays by expert scholars synthesize the best and most provocative work in the field and provide a comprehensive overview of themes and historiography. Covers the culture, politics, and environment of the American West through periods of migration, settlement, and modernization Discusses Native Americans and their conflicts and integration with American settlers A COMPANION TO THE AMERICAN WEST......Page 5 Contents......Page 7 Notes on Contributors......Page 10 Introduction......Page 13 Part I Thinking Through the American West......Page 15 1 The Making of the First American West and the Unmaking of Other Realms......Page 17 2 Thinking West......Page 37 Part II Conquest and Its Patterns: The Nineteenth Century......Page 63 3 Passion and Imagination in the Exploration of the American West......Page 65 4 Environment and the Nineteenth-Century West: Or, Process Encounters Place......Page 89 5 Engineering the Elephant: Industrialism and the Environment in the Greater West......Page 105 6 Mining and the Nineteenth-Century American West......Page 124 7 Law and the Contact of Cultures......Page 142 8 Native Americans in the Nineteenth-Century American West......Page 155 9 Western Violence......Page 174 10 Bringing It All Back Home: Rethinking the History of Women and the Nineteenth-Century West......Page 191 11 Empire and Liberty: Contradictions and Conflicts in Nineteenth-Century Western Political History......Page 212 Part III Exceptionalism or Regionalism? The Twentieth-Century American West......Page 231 12 African Americans in the Twentieth-Century West......Page 233 13 The West and Workers, 1870–1930......Page 252 14 Societies to Match the Scenery: Twentieth-Century Environmental History in the American West......Page 268 15 Where to Draw the Line? The Pacific, Place, and the US West......Page 283 16 Religion and the American West......Page 298 17 Transients and Stickers: The Problem of Community in the American West......Page 316 18 American Indians in the Twentieth Century......Page 341 19 The New Deal's West......Page 358 20 Art, Ideology, and the West......Page 373 21 "The West Plays West": Western Tourism and the Landscape of Leisure......Page 387 22 Hispanics and Latinos......Page 402 23 City Lights: Urban History in the West......Page 424 24 Politics and the Twentieth-Century American West......Page 454 25 The Literary West and the Twentieth Century......Page 472 Bibliography......Page 493 Index......Page 565 A Companion to the American West is a rigorous, illuminating introduction to the history of the American West. Twenty-five essays by expert scholars synthesize the best and most provocative work in the field. Each essay covers a subtopic of western American history, its major concerns and its major works, to provide a comprehensive overview of themes and historiography. The essays not only come from the perspective of the "new western history" reflecting a resurgence in both scholarly and public interest in the region, but also reflect other schools and positions, such as ethnic studies, cultural studies, and subfields of environmental and gender history.The Companion covers such topics as industrialism, women, Native Americans, exploration, religion, politics, and art. Also included is a combined bibliography to aid further research. The essays are lively, well written, and suited to the student, scholar, and all interested readers of the history of the Ametican West. A rigorous introduction to the history of the American West. Over 20 essays by expert scholars synthesize the best work in the field. Each essay covers a subtopic of American Western history, its major concerns and its major works to provide an overview of themes and historiography This compendium, like other new collections about the history of the American West, tilts to the nineteenth and twentieth century and to the country which today makes up the western United States.