Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1995
Abstract
In this important companion to his earlier book, The American Backwoods Frontier, Terry Jordan has again taken the study of cultural diffusion into a new realm of inquiry and interpretation. Although mainly a synthesis of a vast and interdisciplinary literature, North American Cattle Ranching Frontiers offers a revisionist explanation of the origins, spread, and patterns of cattle ranching in most of North America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. This study will prove to be an even more innovative and controversial work than Backwoods, for the questions asked and the solutions provided are grand ones indeed. A cultural geographer, Jordan tailors his narrative with grace, style, and a profusion of attractive, hand-drafted maps, many of them based on the author's earlier empirical research. A few drawings and several photographs from field visits further enrich the visual presentation, while travelers' accounts augment the secondary literature, which is cited in seventy-five pages of endnotes (excluding comments). Together with the thirty-six page bibliographical essay, Jordan's study is now the standard reference on the cultural geography of North American cattle ranching from its Old World origins to the present.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 15:1 (Winter 1995). Copyright © 1995 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.