Three More Views of the American West

Frontiers: A Short History of the American West

By Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher

(Yale University Press, $28.00 hardcover, $19.00 paperback)

Recent college students may recognize these two authors right away. Their previous collaborative work, The American West: A New Interpretive History, was widely adopted as a history textbook and received several recognitions, including the 2000 Western Heritage Award. Frontiers is an abridged and updated version of that book, rewritten for general readers. What the co-authors have created with this book is a concise and often engrossing overview of the American West, from the first contacts between Europeans and Indians to the new challenges of the 21st century. “The history of the frontier is a unifying American theme,” they emphasize in their introduction, “for every part of the country was once a frontier, every region was once a West.” 

The Look of the Old West: A Fully Illustrated Guide

By William Foster-Harris

(Skyhorse Publishing, $19.95)

Historians, actors, stage directors, filmmakers, event reenactors, costume makers, and people who just enjoy reading about America’s past can all find useful and entertaining information in this book.  Dozens of illustrations, coupled with the author’s descriptions,  provide insights into the look and feel of the Old West, from the end of the Civil War through the 1890s. Some of the topics covered include clothes, uniforms, weapons, fashion accessories, wagons, trains, horses and saddles.

Best Stories of the American West: Volume One

Edited by Marc Jafee

(Forge, $15.95 paperback)

“The word ‘best’ is, at best, a moving target,” Marc Jafee wisely has conceded in his introduction. Nonetheless, this is a fine collection of short writings by several well-known authors, including John Graves, Elmer Kelton, Elmore Leonard and Max Evans, plus several writers who appeared in print for the first time in the hardback edition of this paperback reprint. Most of the tales gathered here involve life in the modern West.  For example, filmmaker John Sayles offers up a clever short story about Hollywood stuntmen. But some of the well-written stories look back to the Old West, instead, and one has a character who is a female Pinkerton agent.

-30-