Review
This sprightly written book has plenty of engaging and illuminating moments.--Elliott Ness, University of Arkansas "Journal of American History"
Many viewpoints have been deconstructed in this text, producing a myriad of images, some forceful, some unusual, some creative and all provocative and lively [...] Whether a big picture emerges here is debatable; but so is the notion that there should be a bigger picture. The objective is to learn about competing images.--Margaret Walsh, University of Nottingham
From the Back Cover
The American WestCompeting VisionsKaren R. Jones and John WillsThe American West used to be a story of gunfights, glory, wagon trails, and linear progress. Historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner and Hollywood movies such as Stagecoach (1939) and Shane (1953) cast the trans-Mississippi region as a frontier of epic proportions where 'savagery' met 'civilization' and boys became men.During the late 1980s, this old way of seeing the West came under heavy fire. Scholars such as Patricia Nelson Limerick and Richard White forged a fresh story of the region, a new vision of the West, based around the conquest of peoples and landscapes.The American West: Competing Visions explores the bipolar world of Turner's Old West and Limerick's New West and reveals the values and ambiguities associated with both historical traditions. Sections on Lewis and Clark, the frontier and the cowboy sit alongside work on Indian genocide and women's trail diaries. Images of the region as seen through the arcade Western, Hollywood film and Disney theme parks confirm the West as a symbolic and contested landscape.Tapping into popular fascination with the Cowboy, Hollywood movies, the Indian Wars, and Custer's Last Stand, the authors show the reader how to deconstruct the imagery and reality surrounding Western history.Includes 15 black and white illustrations.Karen R. Jones is Director of American Studies and Lecturer in American History at the University of Kent. She is author of Wolf Mountains: A History of Wolves Along the Great Divide (2002).John Wills is a Lecturer in American History at the University of Kent. He is co-author, with Karen Jones, of The Invention of the Park: Recreational Landscapes from the Garden of Eden to Disney's Magic Kingdom (2005) and author of Conservation Fallout: Energy and Protest at Diablo Canyon, California (2006).
About the Author
Karen R. Jones is Director of American Studies and Lecturer in American History at the University of Kent. She is author of Wolf Mountains: A History of Wolves Along the Great Divide (2002).
John Wills is a Senior Lecturer in American History and American Studies at the University of Kent. He is author of /Invention of the Park/ (2005), /Conservation Fallout/ (2006) and, with Karen Jones, /The American West/ (2009).
