During the 1980s and 1990s, the pioneering work of such scholars as Patricia Limerick gave rise to the New Western History, an intellectual crusade that has completely altered the way most Americans view their own past and the westward movement. Women, Hispanics, and African Americans were just as conspicuous in the westward movement as white men, and The Human Tradition in the American West captures that diversity and complexity. Benson Tong and Regan Lutz have assembled a series of essays that are richly nuanced, intellectually balanced, and true to the rich traditions of the American West.
James S. Olson, Sam Houston State University This superb reader helps to explain the American West in all its complexities and varieties. Through individual biographies that span the centuries from the late eighteenth to the present, the authors animate a region that, despite the legends, maddeningly defies convenient geographical expression. Place and process, region and multiplicity of places—all are set gracefully within the context of a larger American history. This book may be used with great success in both seminars and surveys.
L. G. Moses, Oklahoma State University