Under An Open Sky [Paperback]

William Cronon (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393310639 | ISBN-13: 978-0393310634 | Publication Date: August 17, 1993

The history of the American West is being transformed by exciting new ideas, new questions, new scholarship. For many years this field was dominated by popular images of the lone cowboy and the savage Indian, and by Frederick Jackson Turner's concept of the frontier as a steadily advancing source of democracy and social renewal. But now historians and even the merchants of popular culture are reshaping our views of the frontier and the West by taking up a rich array of new subjects, including the stories of diverse peoples as well as the history of the land itself. A new generation of scholars is reformulating the broader questions also: what was the significance of the frontier in American history? what are the bases of western identity? what themes connect the twentieth-century West to its more distant past? The transformation of western history continues to be an open-ended, turbulent process. The original essays in this volume are reports from the frontier of change. In their diverging assumptions and conclusions, they reflect the vitality of this field. They succeed when they make the case for new questions and suggest possible answers. They advocate no single agenda. But taken together they well represent the passion and high craft with which scholars are creating a new western history.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Thirteen wide-ranging essays form an introduction to the cutting edge of western scholarship in this Festschrift to Yale historian Howard Roberts Lamar, who also contributes a chapter. The editors, themselves Yale-affiliated, attempt in their introductory remarks to provide a road map to the concerns and orientation of a new generation of historians by describing the settlement of the West in terms of its transition from frontier to region. Defining the parameters of the transition as ``species shifting'' (when ecological changes occur as Old World organisms- -e.g., rats, bluegrass--are introduced), ``market making,'' ``land taking,'' ``boundary setting,'' ``state forming,'' and ``self shaping,'' the writers view the transformation as far more complex and dynamic than allowed in older interpretations of ``westering,'' such as that of 19th-century historian Frederick Jackson Turner. Each editor offers an essay demonstrating the new formulation: Cronon analyzes the Kennecott Copper Company's 30-year presence in Alaska, which ended in 1938; Miles details the significance of the Cherokee Advocate, a Cherokee-language newspaper published intermittently over more than 60 years until 1906; Gitlin tackles the Mississippi Valley ``frontier'' as the site of several competing European traditions, including Spanish, French, and Anglo-American. Other essays cover equally diverse subjects, from Patricia Nelson Limerick's (Univ. of Colorado/Boulder) assessment of western myth and symbol in Turner, Henry Nash Smith, and others to Martha A. Sandweiss's (Mead Art Museum/Amherst) study of western art and visual images captured by 19th-century photographer Timothy O'Sullivan and his peers. An articulate and provocative collection--with something for lovers of western facts and figures, as well as for the more theoretically inclined. (Photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 372 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. (August 17, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393310639
• ISBN-13: 978-0393310634
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #402,305 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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