The World of the American West [2 volumes] PDF Download

Author: Gordon Morris Bakken
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 778

View

Book Description
Addressing everything from the details of everyday life to recreation and warfare, this two-volume work examines the social, political, intellectual, and material culture of the American "Old West," from the California Gold Rush of 1849 to the end of the 19th century. What was life really like for ordinary people in the Old West? What did they eat, wear, and think? How did they raise their children? How did they interact with government? What did they do for fun? This encyclopedia provides readers with an engaging and detailed portrayal of the Old West through the examination of social, cultural, and material history. Supported by the most current research, the multivolume set explores various aspects of social history—family, politics, religion, economics, and recreation—to illuminate aspects of a society's emotional life, interactions, opinions, views, beliefs, intimate relationships, and connections between the individual and the greater world. Readers will be exposed to both objective reality and subjective views of a particular culture; as a result, they can create a cohesive, accurate impression of life in the Old West during the second half of the 1800s.

Author: Janne Lahti
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317285336
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 190

View

Book Description
The American West and the World provides a synthetic introduction to the transnational history of the American West. Drawing from the insights of recent scholarship, Janne Lahti recenters the history of the U.S. West in the global contexts of empires and settler colonialism, discussing exploration, expansion, migration, violence, intimacies, and ideas. Lahti examines established subfields of Western scholarship, such as borderlands studies and transnational histories of empire, as well as relatively unexplored connections between the West and geographically nonadjacent spaces. Lucid and incisive, The American West and the World firmly situates the historical West in its proper global context.

Author: Elisée Reclus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Geography
Languages : en
Pages : 646

View

Book Description

Author: John M. Findlay
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496235576
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 517

View

Book Description
In the years between 1940 and 2000, the American Far West went from being a relative backwater of the United States to a considerably more developed, modern, and prosperous region—one capable of influencing not just the nation but the world. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, the population of the West had multiplied more than four times since 1940, and western states had transitioned from rural to urban, becoming the most urbanized section of the country. Massive investment, both private and public, in the western economy had produced regional prosperity, and the tourism industry had undergone massive expansion, altering the ways Americans identified with the West. In The Mobilized American West, 1940–2000, John M. Findlay presents a historical overview of the American West in its decades of modern development. During the years of U.S. mobilization for World War II and the Cold War, the West remained a significant, distinct region even as its development accelerated rapidly and, in many ways, it became better integrated into the rest of the country. By examining events and trends that occurred in the West, Findlay argues that a distinctive, region-wide political culture developed in the western states from a commitment to direct democracy, the role played by the federal government in owning and managing such a large amount of land, and the way different groups of westerners identified with and defined the region. While illustrating western distinctiveness, Findlay also aims to show how, in its sustaining mobilization for war, the region became tethered to the entire nation more than ever before, but on its own terms. Findlay presents an innovative approach to viewing the American West as a region distinctive of the United States, one that occasionally stood ahead of, at odds with, and even in defiance of the nation.

Author: Joseph L. Coulombe
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826263186
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196

View

Book Description
In Mark Twain and the American West, Joseph Coulombe explores how Mark Twain deliberately manipulated contemporary conceptions of the American West to create and then modify a public image that eventually won worldwide fame. He establishes the central role of the western region in the development of a persona that not only helped redefine American manhood and literary celebrity in the late nineteenth century, but also produced some of the most complex and challenging writings in the American canon.Coulombe sheds new light on previously underappreciated components of Twain's distinctly western persona. Gathering evidence from contemporary newspapers, letters, literature, and advice manuals, Coulombe shows how Twain's persona in the early 1860s as a hard-drinking, low-living straight-talker was an implicit response to western conventions of manhood. He then traces the author's movement toward a more sophisticated public image, arguing that Twain characterized language and authorship in the same manner that he described western men: direct, bold, physical, even violent. In this way, Twain capitalized upon common images of the West to create himself as a new sort of western outlaw--one who wrote.Coulombe outlines Twain's struggle to find the proper balance between changing cultural attitudes toward male respectability and rebellion and his own shifting perceptions of the East and the West. Focusing on the tension between these goals, Coulombe explores Twain's emergence as the moneyed and masculine man-of-letters, his treatment of American Indians in its relation to his depiction of Jim in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the enigmatic connection of Huck Finn to the natural world, and Twain's profound influence on Willa Cather's western novels.Mark Twain and the American West is sure to generate new interest and discussion about Mark Twain and his influence. By understanding how conventions of the region, conceptions of money and class, and constructions of manhood intersect with the creation of Twain's persona, Coulombe helps us better appreciate the writer's lasting effect on American thought and literature through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

Author: Amaia Ibarraran-Bigalondo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000092836
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 251

View

Book Description
The story of the American West is that of a journey. It is the story of a movement, of a geographical and human transition, of the delineation of a route that would soon become a rooted myth. The story of the American West has similarly journeyed across boundaries, in a two-way movement, sometimes feeding the idea of that myth, sometimes challenging it. This collection of essays relates to the notion of the traveling essence of the myth of the American West from different geographical and disciplinary standpoints. The volume originates in Europe, in Spain, where the myth traveled, was received, assimilated, and re-presented. It intends to travel back to the West, in a two-way cross-cultural journey, which will hopefully contribute to the delineation of the New—always self-renewing—American West. It includes the work of authors of both sides of the Atlantic ocean who propose a cross-cultural, transdisciplinary dialogue upon the idea, the geography and the representation of the American West.

Author: Glenda Riley
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806160861
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281

View

Book Description
Generations of Americans have seen the West as beyond federal control and direction. But the national government’s presence in the West dates to before Lewis and Clark, and since 1789 a number of U.S. presidents have had a penetrating and long-lasting impact on the region. In Presidents Who Shaped the American West, noted historians Glenda Riley and Richard W. Etulain present startling analyses of chief executives and their policies, illuminating the long reach of presidential power. The authors begin each chapter by sketching a particular president’s biography and explaining the political context in which he operated while in office. They then consider overarching actions and policies that affected both the nation and the region during the president’s administration, such as Thomas Jefferson’s augmentation of the West via the Louisiana Purchase, and Andrew Jackson’s removal of American Indians from the Southeast to “Indian Country” in the West. Abraham Lincoln’s promotion of the Homestead Act, a transcontinental railroad, and western territories and states free of slavery marked further extensions of presidential power in the region. Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation efforts and Jimmy Carter’s expansion of earlier policies reflected growing public concern with the West’s finite natural resources and fragile natural environment. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s highway program, and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society funneled federal funding into the West. In return for this largesse, some argued, the West paid the price of increased federal hegemony, and Ronald Reagan’s presidency arguably curbed that power. Riley and Etulain also discuss the most recent presidential terms and the region’s growing political power in Congress and the federal bureaucracy. With an accessible approach, Presidents Who Shaped the American West establishes the crucial and formative nature of the relationship between the White House and the West—and will encourage readers to continue examining this relationship.

Author: Dee Brown
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439125562
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

View

Book Description
Renowned storyteller Dee Brown, author of the bestselling Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, recreates the struggles of Native Americans, settlers, and ranchers in this stunning volume that illuminates the history of the old West that’s filled with maps and vintage photographs. Beginning with the demise of the Native Americans of the Plains, Brown depicts the onrush of the burgeoning cattle trade and the waves of immigrants who ultimately “settled” the land. In the retelling of this oft-told saga, Brown has demonstrated once again his abilities as a master storyteller and an entertaining popular historian. By turns heroic, tragic, and even humorous, The American West brings to life American tragedy and triumph in the years from 1840 to the turn of the century, and a roster of characters both great and small: Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Dull Knife, Crazy Horse, Captain Jack, John H. Tunstall, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Wyatt Earp, the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, Wild Bill Hickok, Charles Goodnight, Oliver Loving, Buffalo Bill, and many others. The American West is about cattle and the railroads; it is about settlers who came to claim a land not originally their own and how they slowly imposed law and order on these wild and untamed places; and it is about the wanton destruction of the Native American way of life. This is epic history at its best and popular history at its most readable. This new work is culled from Dee Brown’s highly acclaimed writings, which instantly established him as one of America’s foremost Western authorities. Fully revised, rewritten, and edited into one seamless account of America’s most famous frontier, this epic narrative, along with the introduction and a chronological table of events, etches an unforgettable and poignant portrait. The American West is at once a tribute to the West and a majestic new peak for a writer whose long and successful career has been synonymous with excellence in frontier history.

Author: Thayer Tolles
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN: 1588395057
Category : Bronze sculpture, American
Languages : en
Pages : 218

View

Book Description
Themes of the American West have been enduringly popular, and 'The American West in Bronze' features sixty-five iconic bronzes that display a range of subjects, from portrayals of the noble Indian to rough-and-tumble scenes of rowdy cowboys to tributes to the pioneers who settled the lands west of the Mississippi. Fascinating texts offer a fresh look at the roles that artists played in creating interpretations of the "vanishing West"--Whether based on fact, fiction or something in-between. These artists, including Charles M. Russell and Frederic Remington, embody a range of life experiences and artistic approaches."'The American West in Bronze, 1850-1925' is the first full-scale exhibition to explore the aesthetic and cultural impulses behind the creation of statuettes with American western themes, which have been so popular with audiences then and now. Both the exhibition and this accompanying catalogue offer a fresh look at the multifaceted roles played by these sculptors in creating three-dimensional interpretations of western life, whether based on historical fact, mythologized fiction, or most often, something in-between. Examples by such archetypal representatives of the West as Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell are complemented by the work of sculptors such as James Earle Fraser and Paul Manship, who contributed to the popularity of the American bronze statuette even though their western subjects were less frequent."--Publisher's description.

Author: Philip L. Fradkin
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307268608
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

View

Book Description
Wallace Stegner was the premier chronicler of the twentieth-century western American experience, and his novels, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Angle of Repose and the National Book Award–winning The Spectator Bird, brought the life and landscapes of the West to national and international attention. Now, in this illuminating biography, Philip L. Fradkin goes beyond Stegner’s iconic literary status to give us, as well, the influential teacher and visionary conservationist, the man for whom the preservation and integrity of place was as important as his ability to render its qualities and character in his brilliantly crafted fiction and nonfiction. From his birth in 1909 until his death in 1993, Stegner witnessed nearly a century of change in the land that he loved and fought so hard to preserve. We learn of his hardscrabble youth on the Canadian frontier and in Utah, and of his painful relationship with his father, a bootlegger and gambler. We follow his intellectual awakening as a young man and his years as a Depression-era graduate student at the University of Iowa, during its earliest days as a literary center. We watch as he finds his home, with his wife, Mary, in the foothills above Palo Alto, which provided him with a long-awaited sense of belonging and a refuge in which he would write his most treasured works. And here are his years as the legendary founder of the Stanford Creative Writing Program, where his students included Ken Kesey, Edward Abbey, Robert Stone, and Wendell Berry. But the changes wrought by developers and industrialists were too much for Stegner, and he tirelessly fought the transformation of his Garden of Eden into Silicon Valley. His writings on the importance of establishing national parks and wilderness areas—not only for the preservation of untouched landscape but also for the enrichment of the human spirit—played a key role in the passage of historic legislation and comprise some of the most beautiful words ever written about the natural world. Here, too, is the story—told in full for the first time—of the accusations of plagiarism that followed the publication of Angle of Repose, and of the shadow they have cast on his greatest work. Rich in personal and literary detail, and in the sensual description of the country that shaped his work and his life—this is the definitive account of one of the most acclaimed and admired writers, teachers, and conservationists of our time.