The American West

Tracing events from the pre-history to the present day, this book offers a concise and accessible history of the American West.

• Explores the complex interactions between and among cultures in the American West
• Chronologically organized and informed by the latest scholarship
• Grounded in attention to race, class, gender, and the environment, the text focuses on social, economic, and political forces that shaped the lived experiences of diverse westerners and influenced the patterns of western history.

Introduction.

1. First Wests, Many Wests.

2. Inside Native Wests.

3. Enforcing an American West.

4. Imperial Wests.

5. A Diverse, Urban, and Federal West.

6. Mythic West and Modern West.

Suggested Readings.

Index

“Anne Butler and Michael Lansing have given their best then to a difficult task-that of writing a readable and workable history of the American West. A noble effort, and it deserves examination by those who teach and ponder the history of the American West.” (Western History Quarterly)

"The American West is both concise and a significant contribution to understanding the famous region. It offers fresh insights, which is always a good recommendation." (History, October 2008)

Anne M. Butler is Trustee Professor, Emeritus, at Utah State University and a past editor of the Western Historical Quarterly. Author of numerous articles and books, including Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West (1985), she has published extensively on matters of race, class, and gender in western history.

Michael J. Lansing is Assistant Professor of History at Augsburg College. His essays have appeared in the Western Historical Quarterly, Utah Historical Quarterly, Journal of Historical Geography, and Ethics, Place, and Environment. He serves on the editorial board of the University of Arizona Press monograph series “Western Women’s Voices.”

Exploring the complex interactions between and among cultures, this book offers a fresh reading of the history of the American West. Chronologically organized and informed by the latest scholarship, this work examines regional events within the ever shifting boundaries of the West, from pre-history to the present day. Grounded in attention to race, class, gender, and the environment, The American West: A Concise History focuses on significant social, economic, and political forces that shaped the lived experiences of diverse westerners and influenced the patterns of western history. "With fresh insights and lively writing, this brief volume addresses major themes of culture, environment, politics, violence, and popular myth-making that shaped the American West from earliest times to the present day. By focusing on the West’s diverse peoples, women and men, Butler and Lansing underscore the fascinating complexity of this vast region that remains vital for an understanding of the United States and its history."
—Clyde A. Milner, Arkansas State University

“With admirable clarity, the authors analyze the West’s diverse regions, meanings, and populations across many centuries. This is a fine, insightful book.”
—William Deverell, University of Southern California

“A wonderfully readable, thematically sophisticated survey of western history that draws heavily on the voluminous recent scholarship on the West to illuminate developments in race and gender relations, labor, the environment, economics and politics, and the region’s central place in the national imagination.”
—David Wrobel, University of Nevada, Las Vegas