Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1999
Abstract
Between bookend pieces by Earl Pomeroy and Gene M. Gressley, this anthology of hopes comprises essays on economic history by Gerald D. Nash, environmental history by Thomas R. Cox, urban history by Roger W. Lotchin, political history by Robert W. Cherny, women's history by Glenda Riley, cultural history (mainly literature) by Richard W. Etulain, and mythic history (mainly film) by Fred Erisman. The authors vary in the degree to which they emphasize historiography (what already has been done) or the historical agenda (what they think ought to be done), but the formula is much the same throughout: scan the recent literature on the twentieth-century West, then point to the holes in it. The expectation seems to be that soldiers will rush in to fill them like the First Minnesota at the Peach Orchard.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 19:4 (Fall 1999). Copyright © 1999 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.