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Richard White and Patricia Nelson Limerick
The Frontier in American Culture
$25.95, £18.95 paperback
978-0-520-08844-3
Available Now
,
October 1994, Available worldwide
Categories: History; United States History; Native American Ethnicity
October 1994, Available worldwide
Categories: History; United States History; Native American Ethnicity
Free online edition (eScholarship)--available only to University of California faculty, staff, and students (List of public titles)
"White and Limerick are perhaps the most notable of recent historians who have questioned and reexamined traditional views of the American West."—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"[This] handsomely illustrated book . . . explores many historical meanings of the frontier, noting both the positive and negative aspects of westward expansion."—New York Times Book Review
"[This] handsomely illustrated book . . . explores many historical meanings of the frontier, noting both the positive and negative aspects of westward expansion."—New York Times Book Review
"In this beautifully illustrated volume, two of the nation's leading western historians offer brilliant and provocative insight into why the frontier has had such a longstanding and problematic hold on American national thought. Their book is a pleasure both to read and to look at and deserves a wide audience."—William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"The authors . . . demonstrate a keen awareness of the critical and complex relationship between history and legend in the American West and its consequences for modern Americans. Finely crafted with scholarship and good humor, their thoughtful and provocative ruminations lend fresh insight into the shaping and propagation of America's frontier legacy."—B. Byron Price, National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center
"The authors . . . demonstrate a keen awareness of the critical and complex relationship between history and legend in the American West and its consequences for modern Americans. Finely crafted with scholarship and good humor, their thoughtful and provocative ruminations lend fresh insight into the shaping and propagation of America's frontier legacy."—B. Byron Price, National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center
Log cabins and wagon trains, cowboys and Indians, Buffalo Bill and General Custer. These and other frontier images pervade our lives, from fiction to films to advertising, where they attach themselves to products from pancake syrup to cologne, blue jeans to banks. Richard White and Patricia Limerick join their inimitable talents to explore our national preoccupation with this uniquely American image.
Richard White examines the two most enduring stories of the frontier, both told in Chicago in 1893, the year of the Columbian Exposition. One was Frederick Jackson Turner's remarkably influential lecture, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"; the other took place in William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's flamboyant extravaganza, "The Wild West." Turner recounted the peaceful settlement of an empty continent, a tale that placed Indians at the margins. Cody's story put Indians—and bloody battles—at center stage, and culminated with the Battle of the Little Bighorn, popularly known as "Custer's Last Stand." Seemingly contradictory, these two stories together reveal a complicated national identity.
Patricia Limerick shows how the stories took on a life of their own in the twentieth century and were then reshaped by additional voices—those of Indians, Mexicans, African-Americans, and others, whose versions revisit the question of what it means to be an American.
Generously illustrated, engagingly written, and peopled with such unforgettable characters as Sitting Bull, Captain Jack Crawford, and Annie Oakley, The Frontier in American Culture reminds us that despite the divisions and denials the western movement sparked, the image of the frontier unites us in surprising ways.
Richard White examines the two most enduring stories of the frontier, both told in Chicago in 1893, the year of the Columbian Exposition. One was Frederick Jackson Turner's remarkably influential lecture, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"; the other took place in William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's flamboyant extravaganza, "The Wild West." Turner recounted the peaceful settlement of an empty continent, a tale that placed Indians at the margins. Cody's story put Indians—and bloody battles—at center stage, and culminated with the Battle of the Little Bighorn, popularly known as "Custer's Last Stand." Seemingly contradictory, these two stories together reveal a complicated national identity.
Patricia Limerick shows how the stories took on a life of their own in the twentieth century and were then reshaped by additional voices—those of Indians, Mexicans, African-Americans, and others, whose versions revisit the question of what it means to be an American.
Generously illustrated, engagingly written, and peopled with such unforgettable characters as Sitting Bull, Captain Jack Crawford, and Annie Oakley, The Frontier in American Culture reminds us that despite the divisions and denials the western movement sparked, the image of the frontier unites us in surprising ways.
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