A Companion to the American West is a rigorous, illuminating introduction to the history of the American West. Twenty-five essays by expert scholars synthesize the best and most provocative work in the field and provide a comprehensive overview of themes and historiography. Covers the culture, politics, and environment of the American West through periods of migration, settlement, and modernization Discusses Native Americans and their conflicts and integration with American settlers

A Companion to the American West is a rigorous, illuminating introduction to the history of the American West. Twenty-five essays by expert scholars synthesize the best and most provocative work in the field and provide a comprehensive overview of themes and historiography.* Covers the culture, politics, and environment of the American West through periods of migration, settlement, and modernization* Discusses Native Americans and their conflicts and integration with American settlers

Notes on Contributors viiiIntroduction 1William DeverellPart I Thinking Through the American West1 The Making of the First American West and the Unmaking of Other Realms 5Stephen Aron2 Thinking West 25Elliott WestPart II Conquest and Its Patterns: The Nineteenth Century3 Passion and Imagination in the Exploration of the American West 53James P. Ronda4 Environment and the Nineteenth-Century West: Or, Process Encounters Place 77Andrew C. Isenberg5 Engineering the Elephant: Industrialism and the Environment in the Greater West 93David Igler6 Mining and the Nineteenth-Century American West 112Malcolm J. Rohrbough7 Law and the Contact of Cultures 130Sarah Barringer Gordon8 Native Americans in the Nineteenth-Century American West 143David Rich Lewis9 Western Violence 162Michael A. Bellesiles10 Bringing It All Back Home: Rethinking the History of Women and the Nineteenth-Century West 179Elizabeth Jameson11 Empire and Liberty: Contradictions and Conflicts in Nineteenth-Century Western Political History 200Jeffrey OstlerPart III Exceptionalism or Regionalism? The Twentieth-Century American West12 African Americans in the Twentieth-Century West 221Douglas Flamming13 The West and Workers, 1870-1930 240James N. Gregory14 Societies to Match the Scenery: Twentieth-Century Environmental History in the American West 256Dan Flores15 Where to Draw the Line? The Pacific, Place, and the US West 271Chris Friday16 Religion and the American West 286Philip Goff17 Transients and Stickers: The Problem of Community in the American West 304Anne Hyde18 American Indians in the Twentieth Century 329Peter Iverson19 The New Deal's West 346Karen R. Merrill20 Art, Ideology, and the West 361Douglas R. Nickel21 "The West Plays West": Western Tourism and the Landscape of Leisure 375Marguerite S. Shaffer22 Hispanics and Latinos 390Ramón A. Gutiérrez23 City Lights: Urban History in the West 412Robert O. Self24 Politics and the Twentieth-Century American West 442William Deverell25 The Literary West and the Twentieth Century 460David M. WrobelBibliography 481Index 553