"Limerick is one of the most engaging historians writing today." --Richard WhiteThe "settling" of the American West has been perceived throughout the world as a series of quaint, violent, and romantic adventures. But in fact, Patricia Nelson Limerick argues, the West has a history grounded primarily in economic reality; in hardheaded questions of profit, loss, competition, and consolidation. Here she interprets the stories and the characters in a new way: the trappers, traders, Indians, farmers, oilmen, cowboys, and sheriffs of the Old West "meant business" in more ways than one, and their descendents mean business today. 28 illustrations

The legacy of conquest: The unbroken past of the American West

History

Limerick, Patricia Nelson

Americas

W.W. NORTON and CO

A wide-ranging collection of essays and arguments from the New West's landmark historian. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the American West is a region of great views and great friction, vigorous growth and equally vigorous conflict. In Something in the Soil, Patricia Nelson Limerick continues the project she began with The Legacy of Conquest, traveling 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.

Something in the Soil: Field-Testing the New Western History

W.W.Norton&Company

A collection of essays explores the pervasive images of log cabins, wagon trains, cowboys, and Indians in contemporary American culture, examining the reality behind the myths and explaining how and why such images have persisted and their implications. UP.

The Frontier in American Culture: An Exhibition at the Newberry Library, August 26, 1994-January 7, 1995

Arts & Photography

White, Richard

Grossman, James R.

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Univ. Of California Pr.

Log cabins and wagon trains, cowboys and Indians, Buffalo Bill and General Custer. These and other frontier images pervade our lives, from fiction to films to advertising, where they attach themselves to products from pancake syrup to cologne, blue jeans to banks. Richard White and Patricia Limerick join their inimitable talents to explore our national preoccupation with this uniquely American image. Richard White examines the two most enduring stories of the frontier, both told in Chicago in 1893, the year of the Columbian Exposition. One was Frederick Jackson Turner's remarkably influential lecture, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"; the other took place in William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's flamboyant extravaganza, "The Wild West." Turner recounted the peaceful settlement of an empty continent, a tale that placed Indians at the margins. Cody's story put Indians―and bloody battles―at center stage, and culminated with the Battle of the Little Bighorn, popularly known as "Custer's Last Stand." Seemingly contradictory, these two stories together reveal a complicated national identity. Patricia Limerick shows how the stories took on a life of their own in the twentieth century and were then reshaped by additional voices―those of Indians, Mexicans, African-Americans, and others, whose versions revisit the question of what it means to be an American. Generously illustrated, engagingly written, and peopled with such unforgettable characters as Sitting Bull, Captain Jack Crawford, and Annie Oakley, The Frontier in American Culture reminds us that despite the divisions and denials the western movement sparked, the image of the frontier unites us in surprising ways.

The Frontier in American Culture

University of California Press

Even as Americans keep moving "all over the map" in the late twentieth century, they cherish memories of the places they come from. But where do these places-these regions-come from? What makes them so real? In this groundbreaking book a distinguished group of historians explores the concept of region in America, traces changes the idea has undergone in our national experience, and examines its meaning for Americans today. Far from diminishing in importance, the authors conclude, regional differences continue to play a significant role in Americans' self-image. Regional identity, in fact, has always been fed by the very forces that many people think threaten its existence today: a central government, an aggressive economy, and connections with places beyond regional boundaries. Calling into question widely held notions about how Americans came to differ from one another and explaining why those differences continue to flourish, this iconoclastic study-by scholars with differing regional ties-will refresh and redirect the centuries-old discussion over Americans' conceptions of themselves. "All Over the Map makes a distinctive and valuable contribution, and it does so at a critical moment in our thinking about regionalism. The essays have many virtues-they are exceedingly thoughtful and they are well informed. With writing that is wonderfully clear, the book is a delightful and important work for scholars as well as a wider audience. I would like to see it in the book shop at every National Park Service site across the U.S.A."-Michael Kammen, Cornell University

All Over the Map: Rethinking American Regions

Ayers, Edward L.

Nissenbaum, Stephen

Onuf, Peter S.

Johns Hopkins University Press

Examines changing American attitudes towards the deserts, looks at desert writings by Fremont, Twain, and more modern travelers, and describes the role of deserts in American history

Desert Passages: Encounters With the American Deserts

Univ of New Mexico Pr

This lively book traces the development of American attitudes toward the desert using case studies from the writings of John C. FrÃ©mont, William Lewis Manly, Mark Twain, William Ellsworth Smythe, John Van Dyke, George Wharton James, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Edward Abbey. 
 "Patricia Nelson Limerick is an original, learned, passionate writer. Everything she writes about the history of the American West deserves attention."--Larry McMurtry
 "Patricia Limerick is simply one of the best writers alive--and the astonishing thing is that she thinks as clearly and logically as she writes."--Garry Wills

Desert Passages: Encounters with the American Deserts

University of New Mexico Press

Revealing Territory: Photographs of the Southwest

Photographs document how the region has changed, and look at the impact of people on the environment

Klett, Mark

Southall, Thomas W.

Photography & Video

In this brilliant but strangely unsettling contribution to the field of landscape studies, which accompanies a traveling exhibition, Klett sees people as part of the natural landscape. His photographs (115, five in color) examine the way people have occupied and experienced this land and the evidence they have left of their presence. Patricia Limerick discusses the photographs in light of new definitions of the West, and Thomas Southall traces the evolution of Klett's photography. 11x9". Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

In 1987, Drex Brooks began photographing sites that had been important in the history of white/Native American relations, places such as treaty sites and battlefields. This body of work is named Sweet Medicine after a Cheyenne cultural hero who taught his people their rituals and ceremonies and who also foresaw the changes and destruction that the white man would bring. The photographs encompass not only places of death but also places of renewal, places that retain their sacred importance today, even though, in many cases, little is there to inform others of what occurred. This book is for anyone interested in the history of the native peoples in this country and in the events from 1620 to 1890 that so profoundly altered - but didn't quite destroy - their lives.

Sweet Medicine: Sites of Indian Massacres, Battlefields, and Treaties

Brooks, Drex

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Limerick, Patricia Nelson. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Limerick, Patricia Nelson

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Limerick, Patricia Nelson. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The legacy of conquest: The unbroken past of the American West

Something in the Soil: Field-Testing the New Western History

The Frontier in American Culture: An Exhibition at the Newberry Library, August 26, 1994-January 7, 1995

The Frontier in American Culture

All Over the Map: Rethinking American Regions

Desert Passages: Encounters With the American Deserts

Desert Passages: Encounters with the American Deserts

Revealing Territory: Photographs of the Southwest

Revealing Territory: Photographs of the Southwest

Sweet Medicine: Sites of Indian Massacres, Battlefields, and Treaties