The American West

The American West has generated exceptional attention in the past few years, and new scholarship and interpretations have enriched and enlivened the study of its history. Each of the seventeen exciting and provocative essays chosen for this book illuminates an important topic in Western history. Three opening essays by the editors define the West as frontier and region, and place American frontiers in comparative context. Then follow essays that consider women's property rights in Spanish-Mexican California; the mountain men and national identity; Indians and bison on the Great Plains in the early nineteenth century; the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848; the Latter-day Saints from 1830 to 1890; the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 as a case of Indian-white conflict; cowboys as wage workers in the 1880s; homesteading and the homesteading ideal; miners and ethnic conflict in early-twentieth-century Arizona; the Great Depression in Idaho; how World War II changed Los Angeles; Japanese-American women in World War II; African Americans in the West; and the Pacific Northwest since 1945. The editors also provide a general introduction to the study of Western history and a time line of important events.