Global West, American Frontier: Travel, Empire, and Exceptionalism from Manifest Destiny to the Great Depression

Contents

vii CONTENTS Y Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Roads Traveled 1 Beyond the Mythic West 1 Roads Traveled and Not Traveled 8 Part One THE GLOBAL WEST OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Chapter One: Exceptionalism and Globalism: Revisiting the Traveler 21 Exceptionalism and Empire 21 Resituating the Traveler 29 In Europe and Around the World 32 Chapter Two: The World in the West, the West in the World: Travels in the Age of Empire 48 From the African Continent to the Mormon Kingdom 48 From the Western Rockies to the Near and Far East 61 Across the Plains, Around the World, and Back to Africa 66 viii contents Part Two THE AMERICAN FRONTIER OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Chapter Three: “No, Adventure Is Not Dead”: Frontier Journeys in the last Great Age of Exploration 85 Global Frontiers 85 From Hawaii to Africa 86 On the River of Doubt 103 Coda: In Asia 112 Chapter Four: The End of the West? Automotive Frontiers of the Early Twentieth Century 114 The Pioneering Strain 114 The Great Race and the Acids of Materialism 117 The Acids of Modernity 122 Of Tourists and Travel Writers 129 Chapter Five: Rediscovering the West: Regional Guides in the Depression Years 136 The Promise of the West 136 Portrait of a Nation and a Region 142 Tour 1: California Coast to the Lone Star State 144 Tour 2: Southern Plains to the Northern Border 151 Tour 3: Rocky Mountains and Great Basin 160 Tour 4: Pacific Northwest to the Last Frontier 170 Coda: Returning to Native Grounds 178 Conclusion: Enduring Roads 181 Premature Endings: The Presumed Death of the Travel Book 181 Enduring Western Roads 187 Legacies of the Global West and the American Frontier 194 Notes 197 Selected Bibliography 259 Index 297 ...