Product Description

A survey of frontier history, tracing the story from the first Columbian contacts between Indians and Europeans to the multicultural encounters of the modern southwest. It provides details about topics such as western landscapes, environmental movements, literature, arts and film.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #844437 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 632 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In a stirring and enlightening reexamination of the American West, Yale history professor Faragher (Women and Men on the Overland Trail) and Hine (Second Sight), a University of California professor emeritus of history, gauge the impact of key trends and events--the American Revolution, the multiethnic Gold Rush, the 1867 purchase of Russian America (dubbed Alaska, an Aleut word meaning "the big land"), the U.S.-Mexican War, the New Deal, etc.--in shaping the West's socioeconomic development. The American West of legend, brimming with ruggedly individualistic cowboys, intrepid pioneers and gunslingers, scarcely exists in this myth-shattering history. The real West was and continues to be a land of immigrants and of conflicting and melding cultures. "Manifest destiny," the authors maintain, was not a deeply held folk belief: rather, it was the deliberate creation of political propagandists determined to unyoke the policy of westward expansion from the growing sectional controversy over slavery in the 1830s and '40s. As the book moves from the West of the past to the present, the authors show how the region has become the nation's economic, political and cultural pacesetter: Hollywood became the capital of the U.S. "culture industry"; aerospace and defense industries soared; Silicon Valley booted up; Western states absorbed mass migrations from Mexico, Central America and Asia. A substantial revision and update of standard history, this gripping, wonderfully accessible populist saga deserves a place on the shelf alongside the works of Howard Zinn, William Appleman Williams and Ronald Takaki. 233 illus. (many from Yale's treasure-house, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library). (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Hine is professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Riverside and Irvine; Faragher is a professor of American history at Yale University. Both are distinguished experts in the fields of the westward movement and western regional history. In their superbly written work, they have synthesized the traditional and revisionist approaches to the West. They recognize the importance of successive waves of westward expansion in populating and developing the land. Yet, they also portray the West as a series of regions that were neither empty nor "uncivilized" before the arrival of Europeans and, later, Americans. They describe with insight and compassion the variety of peoples who inhabited these regions; the inevitable conflict with settlers and a government that wavered between contempt and misguided compassion is shown as both tragic and, occasionally, oddly heroic. They have done a masterful job of bringing a sense of fairness and perspective to a region and a saga that remain part of our national mythology. Jay Freeman

Customer Reviews

I am offended
"...When Cartier met natives along the Newfoundland coast they greeted him with the only European words they knew - aca nada, "Nothing is here" in Spanish."

This is WRONG. I can't believe Hine and Faragher call themselves historians.

The name Canada comes from a chance meeting between Jacques Cartier and two young native Indians in 1535. The two Indians were showing Cartier the route to their village, Stadacona but they called their village "Kanata", (the Huron-Iroquois word for village). The name stuck and Kanata was then used by Cartier and other explorers to apply to an increasingly larger area. In 1547 everything north of the St. Lawrence River was designated as "Canada." The first official use of the name was in 1791 when Quebec was divided into Upper and Lower Canada. On July 1, 1867 - the date of the country's confederation - the name "Canada" was assumed.

A very good book, whose point of view will irritate many
On its own terms, this book is a huge success.

It synthesizes the past 30 years of serious historical research which revolutionized the presentation of the history of the American West by rescuing the experiences of groups who had been relatively ignored by standard interpretations. Indians, women, blacks, Latinos, Asians, workers are dealt with at length and with sympathy.

The research of anti-capitalist/neo-Marxist, anti-imperialist and pro-environmental historians is summarized and we can see the importance of the challenges they raise to old style historians.

The range of topics is impressive, and the writing is lively and intelligent. (I'd say this is suitable for the college junior/senior level.) The bibliography is amazingly up to date.

The reason why I don't give it a 5 is its lack of balance. At times the authors editorialize crudely--with dismissive judgements ("nonsense") and exclamation points galore to show us when we should boo or hiss.

Less empowered (victim) groups are too often treated as noble, and the majority as vile. This is the Achilles heel of a generation of historians who went into this field with strong orientations and sympathies.

But even more than the distaste for the majority groups, the biggest drawback is the relative lack of attention paid to them. I'm not saying, in an old fashioned way, that they should extol the "achievement" or mindlessly glorify the "Anglos" or capitalists. There is too much solid evidence here that the achievements were not 100% beneficial and that the white males could act and think in apalling ways. But they were the majority actors and this book can too often lose sight of that. At times it feels like the center is missing.

Still, it's an impressive, thought-provoking book. (The section on attempts by cowboys to unionize should be treasured by anybody who was ever spoon fed the Turner thesis.) But it probably should be the second book to give a neophyte, not the first.

A new and highly recommended interpretative survey.
This new interpretive history of the American west is recommended reading for college-level students of American history. Drawings, posters, photos and illustrations pepper what remains a panoramic view of history and characters which succeeds in documenting some of the major trends and personalities of the West. Highly recommended.