The Twentieth-Century West: Historical Interpretations ed. by Gerald D. Nash, Richard W. Etulain (review)

170 Western American Literature The Twentieth-Century West: Historical Interpretations. Edited by Gerald D. Nash and Richard W. Etulain. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. 454 pages, $40.00/$17.50.) No scholar of western American studies can cover very much ground with­ out encountering Turner’s frontier thesis of 1893. For one hundred years it has been the touchstone for our understanding of and investigation into the western American experience. However, the time has come, not to dispense with Turner’s thesis, but to augment it and move beyond its nineteenth-century premises into the twentieth century. And the timely and admirable collection of essays edited by Gerald D. Nash and Richard W. Etulain, The TwentiethCentury West: Historical Interpretations, has done just that. The essays com­ piled by professors Nash and Etulain display indisputably that the West of today is a far more diverse and complex entity than that which confronted Turner and that his thesis isno longer an adequate framework for understand­ ing western experience. As Professor Etulain points out in his prologue to the volume, Turner’s thesis is based on a “to-the-West historiography,” but what the study of the twentieth-century West requires is an “in-the-West historiog­ raphy” that focuses on “social institutions and the West as section.” Following Professor Etulain’s prologue, which offers an overview of his­ toriographical scholarship on the West since Turner, the book is comprised of thirteen essays divided into five sections. The first section discusses the popula­ tion of the West since 1890. Walter Nugent’s essay presents a comprehensive demographic study of the entire Western region, while Carl Abbott concen­ trates specifically on metropolitan development. Karen Anderson discusses the role of women in the West, and her essay is followed by Ricardo Romo’s examination of Mexican Americans and Donald L. Parman’s treatment of Native Americans. Although not completely ignored throughout the entire volume, this collection would have profited from separate essays on both African-Americans and Asian-Americans in the American West. The second section is comprised solely of Howard R. Lamar’s discussion of the ramifications of the Great Depression of the western economy. The next section covers the environment of the West in the twentieth century, through John Opie’s essayon environmental history, William G. Robbins’sexamination of the lumber industry, and Donald J. Pisani’s evaluation of the role of irriga­ tion districts, water rights and their relation to the federal government. The fourth section deals with the always volatile politics of the western region. Paul Kleppner examines western party loyalties and voting patterns since 1900, while William D. Rowley discusses the history of radicalism and reform movements. The two essays that make up the final section of the book cover the West’s cultural and artistic heritage. Fred Erisman offers an excellent overview of western literary regionalism and H. Wayne Morgan discusses the role of the visual arts in shaping the image of the West in the American imagination. The essaysin The Twentieth-Century West, according to Gerald D. Nash, serve to “suggest the outlines of an emerging image of the West during the last Reviews 171 one hundred years.” Nevertheless, much remains to be done. As much as this work is a comprehensive examination of significant issues and scholarship in the historiography of the West in this century, it is also a call for and a guide to the scholarship that is still needed. Accordingly, Nash notes that “the essays in this volume are designed to be suggestive, not exhaustive, illustrative rather than definitive.” Gerald Nash and Richard Etulain have produced a com­ mendable and invaluable contribution to western American studies that, although it may not cover all the ground that needs to be covered, charts that ground and shows us how to cover it. TIM POLAND Radford University Beyond the Mythic West. By Stewart Udall, Pat Limerick, Charles Wilkinson, John Volkman, and William Kittredge. (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1991. 162 pages, $29.95.) Beyond the Mythic West combines the essays of five prominent western writers with the color photographs of thirteen western photographers to form a tribute to the American West. Each of the...