Something in the Soil: Field-Testing the New Western History [Hardcover]

Patricia Nelson Limerick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2000

At the beginning of the 21st century, the American West is a region of great views and great fiction, vigorous growth and equally vigorous conflict. In this wide-ranging collection of essays and arguments, Patricia Nelson Limerick continues the project she began with "The Legacy of Conquest", travelling far outside the usual academic circles to put Western history to use in reckoning with current dilemmas. Whether the topic is the changing mission of the national parks, the notion of "culture" as a sort of Frankenstein's monster, the resurgent boom in Western gold mining, the unexamined - and increasingly ineffective - rituals of American environmentalists or current struggles over the standing of the "Great White Men" of the frontier past, Limerick operates on the principle that history is an active presence in the West today, quite literally "something in the soil". Her irreverence for conventional pieties coexists with her respect for the American West's long history as a magnet for dreams of a better life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This opinionated, occasionally provocative collection of essays takes aim at Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis that the frontier closed in 1890. Picking up where her influential first book, The Legacy of Conquest (1987)--which helped galvanize a movement to revision the West's history--left off, Limerick (a professor of history at the University of Colorado) asserts that the American West is a work in progress--not a frontier. Arguing that popular images of the Old West are tinged with nationalistic self-congratulation and toxic ethnocentrism, she attempts to replace fuzzy nostalgia with a grounded, down-to-earth reassessment of westward expansion. Throughout, she gives full play to the harsh realities of the slaughter and dislocation of Native Americans, the role of frontier women and ethnic diversity. In one essay, she contends that the California Gold Rush, which fostered rapid urbanization, environmental havoc and Native displacement, was the single most important event in the American West's history. Elsewhere she dismantles romanticized or sanitized images of the American West in TV shows, Disney's Frontierland, textbooks and the appropriation of frontier rhetoric by Kennedy's "New Frontier" and Reagan's space program. She includes robust profiles of such unsung figures as Mary Roberts Coolidge, champion of Chinese immigrants in turn-of-the-century California, and deals with environmentalism, Mormon identity and Asian-American versions of the American agrarian dream. Limerick closes on an offbeat but welcome note, with a scathing critique of stodgy academic prose and with guidelines for clear writing. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Unlike many academic historians, Professor Limerick frequently delivers lectures to general audiences. This volume collects such forays into the public square since she wrote a history of the West, The Legacy of Conquest (1987). Her subjects are various but unified by the concept that the West's history hardly ended with Frederick Jackson Turner's famous "Frontier Thesis" in 1893. History permeates the trans-Mississippi West (inspiring her title), but the popular awareness of its continuity to the present--expressed in controversies over land and water usages and in interethnic relations--lends itself to oversimplification of past events. To illustrate, Limerick selects the Modoc War of 1872^-1873 in Northern California, representing it as far from being a pat settler-native battle. Although Limerick's essays grapple with historiography (one piece critiques textbooks), she pitches so earnestly toward the public rather than academia that fans of Western biographies, histories, and novels will find her exploration of underlying patterns in the endlessly fascinating study of the West provocative. Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (March 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393037886
• ISBN-13: 978-0393037883
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #274,969 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fertile Soil for Academia, July 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Something in the Soil: Field-Testing the New Western History (Hardcover)

In true "new west" fasion, Dr. Limerick uncovers and more important contextualizes some rather uncomfortable but necessary information about darker moments in the history of the West. However Limerick also moves beyond that paradigm and wittily "reads" why we read certain aspects of history the way that we do. The book definately made me think about how I view the West, both historically and in present time. I found the insistent cateloging a bit overdone, but much of the book is laugh out loud funny. If you are used to reading dull academic prose, this is a wonderful breath of Colorado-fresh air (a little dry, a little hot, but resusitating nonetheless). Best of all, she includes three addendum pieces, one of which offers some succinct and much needed advice on writing readable prose. The other, "Dancing with Professors" a sly little piece she wrote for a mass audience on why professors act the way that they do, is worth the book itself.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile essays on the "New West", July 10, 2008

By 

R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West (Paperback)

SOMETHING IN THE SOIL is a collection of essays relating to the "history of the New West" (or "the new history of the West") with which Limerick is associated. Some of the essays are recycled, and some were not previously published. Limerick tries to impose some order by grouping them in five Parts, but still the book has a mildly disjointed feel, though Limerick's distinctive style and voice provides some unity.

What Limerick brings to the table is a willingness to reconsider and examine anew many issues, including many myths, associated with the American West, and to discuss them clearly and cogently. Although the book was published eight years ago (and several of the essays originally published longer ago than that), the essays are still sufficiently relevant to warrant reading them. And the reading will be much easier and enjoyable than is the case with the work of most university historians. Limerick makes it a point to avoid academic jargon and tortured syntax (indeed, one of the essays addresses the problems seemingly endemic to academic writing), and she has achieved a distinctive voice, rather informal and casual, yet honest and sincere.

She also is to be commended for re-thinking and, where she finds it appropriate, revising her earlier work, including "The Legacy of Conquest," which was published in 1987 and elevated Limerick to the front rank of "New West" historians. Occasionally, her points or arguments strike me as a little far-fetched or over-the-top, but at least she is lively and provocative.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars for the knowing, March 19, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West (Paperback)

Limerick made a huge mark on the study of the American west with her "Legacy of Conquest" so I'll read anything with her name on it. This book is a compilation of speeches and essays, which she has tried to group together thematically. Each essay on its own is interesting, but as a group, they don't work. Each piece was written for a different audience - an environmental group, a commemorative book, historians. It feels rather disjointed. Also, she is often speaking to people with some background knowledge of her subject matter, so she does not always explain references to books, authors, events. I think if someone was looking for an introduction to Western history, this would be one of those works you would read after having read other works. For the new-comer, Legacy of Conquest is a much better introduction.