Reading List - North American West

1. Defining the West / Frontier

Cronon, William. Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past. New York: Norton, 1994.

Etulain, Richard W. Re-Imagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art (1996).

Limerick, Patricia, Clyde Milner, and Charles Rankin. Trails: Toward a New Western History. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991.

Limerick, Patricia. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: Norton, 1987.

Milner II, Clyde A., ed. A New Significance: Re-envisioning the History of the American West (1996).

Milner II, Clyde A., Carol A. O’Connor, and Martha Sandweiss, eds. The Oxford History of the American West (1994).

Nash, Gerald. Creating the West: Historical Interpretations, 1890-1990 (1991).

Nash, Gerald and Richard W. Etulain, eds. Researching Western History: Topics in the Twentieth Century (1997).

——. The Twentieth-Century West: Historical Interpretations (1989).

Prown, Jules David, ed. Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West (1992).

Turner, Frederick Jackson. Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner [with commentary by John Mack Faragher] (1994).

White, Richard. “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”. 1991.

Wrobel, David. The End of American Exceptionalism: Frontier Anxiety from the Old West to the New Deal (1993).

Wrobel, David M. and Michael Steiner, eds. Many Wests: Place, Culture, & Regional Identity (1997).

2. Mythic West

Hyde, Anne Farrar. An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture, 1820-1920 (1990).

Mitchell, Lee Clark. Witness to a Vanishing America: The Nineteenth-Century Response (1981).

Prown, Jules David, ed. Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West (1992).

Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization (1998)

Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.

Smith, Henry. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. Harvard, 2007.

Smith, Sherry. The View from Officers’ Row: Army Perceptions of Western Indians (1991)

Warren, Louis S. Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show (2005)

3. Native Empires & Encounters, Cooperation and Confrontations with Native Peoples

Blackhawk, Ned. Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West. Harvard University Press, 2008.

Brooks, James F. Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (2002)

Calloway, Colin G. One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark (2006)

DuVal, Kathleen. The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.

Hamalainen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire.

Hurtado, Albert L. Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender, and Culture in Old California (1999)

Ostler, Jeffrey. The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee (2004)

Prucha, Francis Paul. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (1986)

Ronda, James. Lewis and Clark among the Indians. New York: Bison, 2002.

Wishart, David J. An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians (1997)

Weber, David J. The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (1982)

Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America (1994)

4. Expansion, War and Dependence

Carter, Sarah. The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada to 1915 (2008)

DeLay, Brian. War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (2009)

Faragher, John Mack. Women and Men on the Overland Trail (1979, 2001)

Goetzmann, William. Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West (1966).

Hoxie, Frederick E. A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920 (2001)

Jacoby, Karl. Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History (2008)

Lamar, Howard R. The Far Southwest, 1846-1912: A Territorial History. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.

May, Dean L. Three Frontiers: Family, Land, and Society in the Americans West, 1850-1900 (1994)

Montoya, Maria. Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict Over Land in the American West, 1840-1900 (2005)

Pascoe, Peggy. Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West (1990)

Robbins, William G. Colony & Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West (1994).

Tate, Michael L. The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West (2001).

Truett, Samuel. Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (2006).

Unrau, William E. The Rise and Fall of Indian Country, 1825-1855 (2007).

Utley, Robert. The Indian Frontier, 1846-1890. University of New Mexico Press, [1984] 2003.

West, Elliot. The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado (2000)

White, Richard. The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.

Wooster, Robert. The Military and United States Indian Policy, 1865-1903 (1998)

5. Environment, Natural Resources, and Conservation

Andrews, Thomas G. Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (2010)

Binnema, Theodore. Common and Contested Ground: A Human and Environmental History of the Northwestern Plains (2001)

Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: Norton, 1991.

Evans, Sterling D. Bound in Twine: The History and Ecology of the Henequen-Wheat Complex for Mexico and the American and Canadian Plains, 1880-1950 (2008)

Fiege, Mark. Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West (1999).

Harvey, Mark W. T. A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement (1994).

Hundley, Norris. The Great Thirst: Californians and Water―A History, Revised Edition ([1992], 2001).

Igler, David. Industrial Cowboys: Miller & Lux and the Transformation of the Far West, 1850-1920 (2005)

Isenberg, Andrew. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History,, 1750-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Isenberg, Andrew C. Mining California: An Ecological History (2005)

Malone, Michael. The Battle for Butte: Mining and Politics on the Northern Frontier, 1864-1906. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.

Merrill, Karin. Public Lands and Political Meaning: Ranchers, the Government, and the Property Between Them. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Pisani, Donald. To Reclaim a Divided West: Water, Law, and Public Policy, 1848-1902. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.

_______. Water and the American Government: The Reclamation Bureau, National Water Policy, and the West, 1902-1935 (2002).

Righter, Robert W. The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America’s Most Controversial Damn and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism (2005)

Russell, Sharman. Kill the Cowboy: A Battle of Mythology in the New West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

Spence, Mark David. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (2000)

Starrs, Paul. Let the Cowboy Ride: Cattle Ranching in the American West. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Stegner, Wallace. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (1962)

Webb, Walter. The Great Plains. Lincoln, 1981.

West, Elliott. The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains (1995).

White, Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (1995)

Wilkinson, Charles. Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West. Island Press, 1993.

Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. Oxford, 1992.

______. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (1979)

6. American West in the Twentieth Century

Abbott, Carl. How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America (2008).

_______. The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995.

Billington, David P. and Donald C. Jackson. Big Dams of the New Deal Era: A Confluence of Engineering and Politics (2006).

Decker, Peter R. Old Fences, New Neighbors (1998).

Findlay, John M. Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Garcia, Matt. A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970 (2001)

Gomez, Arthur. Quest for the Golden Circle: The Four Corners and the Metropolitan West, 1945-1970. University of Kansas Press, 2000.

Egan, Timothy. Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West. Vintage, 1999.

Hurt, R. Douglas, ed. The Rural West since World War II. University Press of Kansas, 1998.

Hurt, R. Douglas. The Great Plains during World War II. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.

Johnson, Marilynn. The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II (1996).

Lotchin, Roger W. Fortress California 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare (1992).

______. The Bad City in the Good War: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego. Indiana University Press, 2003.

Lowitt, Richard. The New Deal and the West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.

Nash, Gerald D. The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second World War (1985)

_______. The Federal Landscape: An Economic History of the Twentieth-Century West. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999.

Ringholz, Raye. Paradise Paved: The Challenge of Growth in the New West. University of Utah Press, 1996.

Rothman, Hal. Devil’s Bargain: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West. University Press of Kansas, 2000.

Stiles, Jim. Brave New West: Morphing Moab at the Speed of Greed. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007.

Wiley, Peter and Robert Gottlieb. Empires in the Sun: The Rise of the New American West. University of Arizona Press, 1985.

7. Identity / Community

Benton-Cole, Catherine. Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands (2008)

Berglund, Barbara. Making San Francisco American: Culture Frontiers in the Urban West, 1846-1890 (2007)

Broussard. Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900-1954 (1993).

Daniels, Roger. Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II, revised edition ([1993] 2004).

Fixico, Donald. The Urban Indian Experience in America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.

Gonzales, Deena. Refusing the Favor: The Spanish-Mexican Women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880.

Gregory, James N. American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (1989).

Gutierrez, David. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (1995)

Hoxie, Frederick E. Parading through History: The Making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805-1935 (1997)

Iverson, Peter. When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West (1994).

Leonard, Kevin Allen. The Battle for Los Angeles: Racial Ideology and World War II. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.

Luckingham, Bradford. Minorities in Phoenix: A Profile of Mexican American, Chinese American, and African American Communities, 1860-1992 (1994).

Markoff, John. What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (2006).

Matsumoto, Valerie J. Farming the Home Place: A Japanese American Community in California, 1919-1982 (1993).

Meeks, Eric. Border Citizens: The Making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.

Parman, Donald L. Indians and the American West in the Twentieth Century (1994)

Pitti, Stephen J. The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans (2003).

Ramos, Raúl. Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821-1861. Chapel Hill, 2008.

Ruiz, Vicki L. Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 (1987).

Sanchez, George. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945. New York: Oxford, 1993.

Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990 (1998).

______. The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle’s Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era (1994).

Van Nuys, Frank. Americanizing the West: Race, Immigrants, and Citizenship, 1890-1930 (2002).

Whitaker, Matthew C. Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West (2005).