Conquests and Consequences

Conquests and Consequences introduces students to the history of the American West by examining key questions about the identity of the region.

• Discusses how diverse societies and empires have shaped and reshaped the American West over the centuries
• Looks at the points at which the West has functioned as a colony, and its transition to functioning as a region
• Examines how the concept of frontier functions in the West
• Illustrated with numerous maps, images, and photographs, in partnership with the Buffalo Bill Historical Center

Chapter 1: Introductions

Chapter 2: The First West: Native Peoples

Chapter 3: West is North: The Spanish Empire

Chapter 4: West is South: The French Empire

Chapter 5: The English Empire: Turner's First War

Chapter 6: Growing Pains

Chapter 7: Putting Down Roots

Chapter 8: This Land is Our Land?

Chapter 9: Last Frontiers

CHapter 10: The "Progressive" Era

Chapter 11: From Boom to Bust

Chapter 12: Depression to Cold War

Chapter 13: The Metropolitan West to the 1980s

Chapter 14: From the Eighties to the new Millennium

Chapter 15: Into the Future and Back to the Past

“The new interpretation makes the twentieth century in all its multicultural and ecological elements a part of Western history rather than an afterthought once the fronter closes. . . . Conquests & Consequences is well-written and holds a reader’s interest even as the narrative races across the centuries.” –Journal of the West

“Higham and Katerberg invite students to consider history’s relevance to their lives as global citizens and to examine what hope they have for the future. Whether or not they agree that in the West change is ‘the only thing we can be sure of,’ readers of Conquests & Consequences will enjoy and learn from this provocative textbook.” – Great Plains Quarterly

Carol L. Higham is an independent scholar who has taught at Winona State University, Texas A&M University, Davidson College, and theUniversity of North Carolina - Charlotte. Her first book, Noble, Wretched and Redeemable, examined missionary attitudes toward Indians in the Canadian and U.S. Wests. She then edited two comparative textbooks, One West, Two Myths. Currently, she is writing a book on myths about Indians as cannibals in Western North America.

William H. Katerberg is an associate professor of history and director of the Dirk and JoAnn Mellema Program in Western American Studies at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His research focuses on national identity, religion, popular culture, and the West in North America. His published work includes Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880-1950 (2001); The Future of Hope: Christian Tradition amid Modernity and Postmodernity, coedited with Miroslav Volf (2004); Future West: Utopia and Apocalypse in Frontier Science Fiction (2008); and essays on the history and culture of the North American West in Western American Literature and The American Review of Canadian Studies. He is currently working on projects on political extremism in the United States since World War II and on violence and power in the North American West.