The Mythic West In Twentieth Century America

Author : Robert G. Athearn
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Mythic West in Twentieth-century America written by Robert G. Athearn and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Briefly describes life in the West, and discusses the ephemeral nature of the region, western towns, the tourist industry, agriculture, fiction, and the ecology movement.

Author : Robert G. Athearn
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Mythic West in Twentieth-century America written by Robert G. Athearn and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Briefly describes life in the West, and discusses the ephemeral nature of the region, western towns, the tourist industry, agriculture, fiction, and the ecology movement.

Author : John Williams
Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 1590174240
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Butcher's Crossing written by John Williams and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2011-03-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a major motion picture starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Gabe Polsky. In his National Book Award–winning novel Augustus, John Williams uncovered the secrets of ancient Rome. With Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America. It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to find a world as irremediably changed as they have been.

Author : Hal Rothman
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 456 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Devil's Bargains written by Hal Rothman and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The West is popularly perceived as America's last outpost of unfettered opportunity, but twentieth-century corporate tourism has transformed it into America's "land of opportunism." From Sun Valley to Santa Fe, towns throughout the West have been turned over to outsiders—and not just to those who visit and move on, but to those who stay and control. Although tourism has been a blessing for many, bringing economic and cultural prosperity to communities without obvious means of support or allowing towns on the brink of extinction to renew themselves; the costs on more intangible levels may be said to outweigh the benefits and be a devil's bargain in the making. Hal Rothman examines the effect of twentieth-century tourism on the West and exposes that industry's darker side. He tells how tourism evolved from Grand Canyon rail trips to Sun Valley ski weekends and Disneyland vacations, and how the post-World War II boom in air travel and luxury hotels capitalized on a surge in discretionary income for many Americans, combined with newfound leisure time. From major destinations like Las Vegas to revitalized towns like Aspen and Moab, Rothman reveals how the introduction of tourism into a community may seem innocuous, but residents gradually realize, as they seek to preserve the authenticity of their communities, that decision-making power has subtly shifted from the community itself to the newly arrived corporate financiers. And because tourism often results in a redistribution of wealth and power to "outsiders," observes Rothman, it represents a new form of colonialism for the region. By depicting the nature of tourism in the American West through true stories of places and individuals that have felt its grasp, Rothman doesn't just document the effects of tourism but provides us with an enlightened explanation of the shape these changes take. Deftly balancing historical perspective with an eye for what's happening in the region right now, his book sets new standards for the study of tourism and is one that no citizen of the West whose life is touched by that industry can afford to ignore.

Author : Richard Slotkin
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 9780806130316
Total Pages : 868 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Gunfighter Nation written by Richard Slotkin and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 868 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the ways in which the frontier myth influences American culture and politics, drawing on fiction, western films, and political writing

Author : Elsie Singmaster
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780689121630
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Magic Mirror written by Elsie Singmaster and published by . This book was released on 1934 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Richard Aquila
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
ISBN 13 : 0816531544
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Sagebrush Trail written by Richard Aquila and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-04-16 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sagebrush Trail is a history of Western movies but also a history of twentieth-century America. Richard Aquila’s fast-paced narrative covers both the silent and sound eras, and includes classic westerns such as Stagecoach, A Fistful of Dollars, and Unforgiven, as well as B-Westerns that starred film cowboys like Tom Mix, Gene Autry, and Hopalong Cassidy. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 traces the birth and growth of Westerns from 1900 through the end of World War II. Part 2 focuses on a transitional period in Western movie history during the two decades following World War II. Finally, part 3 shows how Western movies reflected the rapid political, social, and cultural changes that transformed America in the 1960s and the last decades of the twentieth century. The Sagebrush Trail explains how Westerns evolved throughout the twentieth century in response to changing times, and it provides new evidence and fresh interpretations about both Westerns and American history. These films offer perspectives on the past that historians might otherwise miss. They reveal how Americans reacted to political and social movements, war, and cultural change. The result is the definitive story of Western movies, which contributes to our understanding of not just movie history but also the mythic West and American history. Because of its subject matter and unique approach that blends movies and history, The Sagebrush Trail should appeal to anyone interested in Western movies, pop culture, the American West, and recent American history and culture. The mythic West beckons but eludes. Yet glimpses of its utopian potential can always be found, even if just for a few hours in the realm of Western movies. There on the silver screen, the mythic West continues to ride tall in the saddle along a “sagebrush trail” that reveals valuable clues about American life and thought.

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The twentieth-century American West written by and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Bonnie Christensen
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Red Lodge and the Mythic West written by Bonnie Christensen and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tracing the story of Red Lodge from the 1880s to the present, Christensen tells how a mining town managed to endure the vagaries of the West's unpredictable extractive-industries economy. She connects Red Lodge to a myriad of larger events and historical forces to show how national and regional influences have contributed to the development of local identities, exploring how and why westerners first rejected and then embraced "western" images, and how ethnicity, wilderness, and historic preservation became part of the identity that defined one town."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Gordon Morris Bakken
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136931597
Total Pages : 982 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The World of the American West written by Gordon Morris Bakken and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-10-04 with total page 982 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The World of the American West is an innovative collection of original essays that brings the world of the American West to life, and conveys the distinctiveness of this diverse, constantly changing region. Twenty scholars incorporate the freshest research in the field to take the history of the American West out of its timeworn "Cowboys and Indians" stereotype right up into the major issues being discussed today, from water rights to the presence of the defense industry. Other topics covered in this heavily illustrated, highly accessible volume include the effects of leisure and tourism, western women, politics and politicians, Native Americans in the twentieth century, and of course, oil. With insight both informative and unexpected, The World of the American West offers perspectives on the latest developments affecting the modern American West, providing essential reading for all scholars and students of the field so that they may better understand the vibrant history of this globally significant, ever-evolving region of North America.