Customer Reviews

Gunfighter Nation: Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America, The

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Winner of countless praise, Gunfighter Nation changed the way we view almost all aspects of American history. It is a well-crafted critical work that articulates earlier French theories of common mythologies and their influences on history but frames them in purely American terms.

Viewing the fictional works of Zane Gray, James Fenimore Cooper, the historical work of Teddy Roosevelt and Frederick Jackson Turner, the influence of popular entertainment like Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and the genres of the western film and film noir Slotkin methodically describes the construction of the American frontier myth. He explores how this myth has influenced the personal lives of great figures of American history and subsequently affected all forms of American policy both foreign and domestic.

The book connects the myth of the frontier to common perceptions of race, class and gender and illustrates how integral that myth was in America's attempts to expand into the Caribbean, battle the forces of Communism in Europe and project power into Southeast Asia. There are some particularly interesting sections that deal specifically with how the frontier myth inspired the strategic and tactical mindset of the war in Vietnam.

Without the slightest hyperbole this book is truly revolutionary. Slotkin was one of the first to tell the story of American history through its influence on pop culture and one of the first to show the influences of pop culture on history. His theories of American myth making have become the backbone of almost all work being done in American Studies and this series is among the most commonly cited resources in academic works over many broad fields.

Clearly the source and still the best for any serious (and even amateur) student of American history. Its innumerable accolades are well deserved.

This book is a must buy, for anyone interested in an well researched account of frontier myth's. Slotkin delivers a readable journey through the western mythology of the twentieth-century.

This and Slotkin's other volumes in this trilogy are, to me, exceptionally well-written, perceptive, and although long and complex, definitely worth studying if you are an open-hearted open-minded seeker. It is amazing, and sometimes depressing, to see how two people can read the same work and have totally opposite reactions. I was astonished to read one review which says this is a terrible, an awful, a bad book. It can only be terrible and bad if you are prejudicially predisposed to want to disagree with Slotkin's premises, but Slotkin does provide ample annotation and proof of facts he cites. We have all been lied to and we have all been victims of this all-too-human propensity to belief our own cartoon and movie mythic hero-characters. We are doing it all over again in Iraq, we have disastrous collective amnesia, and evidenced by candidate McCain in the Pres. debate proudly announcing his hero is Teddy Roosevelt, who, as Slotkin shows by direct quotes of TRW's writings, was a White supremacist, a racist, and an American Imperialist! This is not about liberal, or leftist, of conservative and rightist, it is about the truth beyond all false categories.

"Gunfighter Nation" follows the influence of the Old West and the Frontier (both real and how it was percieved; sometimes the two are at odds) in American history from the 1800's to modern times. It makes a good point in showing how Western movies mirror the times in which they are made and how the frontier experience is still with us today. The two drawbacks of the book is its EXTREMELY long length and its Leftist ideology that pops up toward the end.

And the "Old West Mythology" even caused Hitler. For God's sake people, this is just another nit-wit liberal pseudo-intellectual confusing the already confused. It really, really is an awful book.