Trails: Toward a New Western History

by B01, Patricia Nelson Limerick (Editor), Charles Rankin (Editor)

Overview

This is the new story of the Old West, told by ten historians who dare to reenvision the American West and knock the field of Western history on its ear. Some historians call it a revolution.

The Trails Conference in Santa Fe, a 1989 gathering organized by “new” western historian Patricia Nelson Limerick, spawned widespread media coverage and academic debate and provided the impetus for this volume. There, at the end of the Santa Fe Trail, leading scholars came together to discuss, debate, and evaluate an exciting new view of our past. It amounts to a far-reaching reexamination of the role of the West in U.S. history and of the field of Western history itself.

Trails brings together the best of this new work. The contributors provide a range of views that clarify the changes in Western history. They consider what the “New Western History” is, what its impact on Western history has been thus far, and where it might lead as we move into the 1990s and beyond.

These historians reject both the “tall in the saddle” myth and the concept of the frontier and its settlement described by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893: a single, triumphant process that began with the arrival of white settlers and ended a century later when all the land was claimed. Instead, they see continuity. To them, the West is a region, washed by waves of successive emigrants over a period of 25,000 years; a place with climate, resources, and sustained damage of human habitation.

Contributors: Brian W. Dippie, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Michael P. Malone, Walter Nugent, Peggy Pascoe, William G. Robbins, Gerald Thompson, Elliott West, Richard White, Donald Worster

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780700625314
Publisher:	University Press of Kansas
Publication date:	04/20/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Patricia Nelson Limerick is professor of history at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. Clyde A. Milner II is professor of history emeritus at Arkansas State University. Charles E. Rankin is acquisitions editor at the University of Oklahoma Press.
Milner II, Clyde A.

Table of Contents

Preface

I Trails: The New Western History

1. Beyond the Agrarian Myth, Donald Worster

2. Trashing the Trails, Richard White

3. Western Women at the Cultural Crossroads, Peggy Pascoe

4. The Trail to Santa Fe: The Unleashing of the Western Public Intellectual, Patricia Nelson Limerick

II Appraising the Territories: Old and New Western Histories

5. What on Earth is the New Western History?, Patricia Nelson Limerick

6. Another Look at Frontier/Western Historiography, Gerald Thompson

7. The “New Western History,” an Assessment, Michael P. Malone

8. A Longer, Grimmer, but More Interesting Story, Elliott West

9. American Wests: Historiographical Perspectives, Brian W. Dippie

III The Global West

10. Beyond the Last Frontier: Toward a New Approach to Western American History, Michael P. Malone

11. Frontiers and Empires in the Late Nineteenth Century, Walter Nugent

12. Laying Siege to Western History: The Emergence of New Paradigms, William G. Robbins

Notes

The Contributors

Index

Editorial Reviews

"A stimulating showcase of “new western history” arguments."—American Historical Review

"This book is among the most stimulating, thought provoking and, at the same time most controversial publications dealing with western American history."—Western Historical Quarterly

"An excellent introduction to the fundamental issues affecting contemporary interpretations of the American West."—Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains

"This book is rich fare. It sparkles with bold dissent, provides alternative strategies and approaches, and contains no small measure of useful summary and judicious evaluation."—Pacific Northwest Quarterly

From the Publisher - EBOOK COMMENTARY

"A stimulating showcase of "new western history" arguments."--American Historical Review

"This book is among the most stimulating, thought provoking and, at the same time most controversial publications dealing with western American history."--Western Historical Quarterly

"An excellent introduction to the fundamental issues affecting contemporary interpretations of the American West."--Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains

"This book is rich fare. It sparkles with bold dissent, provides alternative strategies and approaches, and contains no small measure of useful summary and judicious evaluation."--Pacific Northwest Quarterly


"A stimulating showcase of “new western history” arguments."—American Historical Review

"This book is among the most stimulating, thought provoking and, at the same time most controversial publications dealing with western American history."—Western Historical Quarterly

"An excellent introduction to the fundamental issues affecting contemporary interpretations of the American West."—Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains

"This book is rich fare. It sparkles with bold dissent, provides alternative strategies and approaches, and contains no small measure of useful summary and judicious evaluation."—Pacific Northwest Quarterly

From the Publisher

Among the most stimulating, thought provoking, and, at the same time, most controversial publications dealing with western American history.

Western Historical Quarterly

This volume showcases some of the best of the new Western history, a school that seeks to correct omissions and inadequacies in traditional historical treatment of the American West. These revisionists view the West as a region that had its own cultures before the arrival of Anglo-Americans rather than as virgin territory to be conquered; the roles of women, Native Americans and Mexicans fill out the picture. The deans of traditional Western history, Frederick Jackson Turner and Walter Prescott Webb, come in for a fair amount of criticism. While several of the articles are historiographic, defining this new mode of analysis, others--such as Walter Nugent's ``Frontiers and Empires in the Late Nineteenth Century,'' which draws parallels between 19th-century colonialism and America's westward expansion--are both accessible and informative. In all, the 12 essays provide a worthy introduction to an ongoing reappraisal of our frontier past. Limerick is the author of The Legacy of Conquest ; Milner wrote Major Problems in the History of the American West ; and Rankin is editor of Montana: The Magazine of Western History . (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A collection of essays originating in the September 1989 symposium on [title] held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but including some commissioned later, reexamine the role of the West in US history and the field of western history itself. Seven of the 12 essays have been previously published. Paper edition (unseen), $12.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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