Into the West: From Reconstruction to the Final Days of the American Frontier (review)

In the decades immediately following the Civil War, the United States underwent an intense period of nation building, both mending a country ripped apart by war and populating territory along its ever westward shifting frontier. McPherson attempts to integrate these two movements in a series of two- to four-page chapters that offer a brief overview of a given theme. The history is solid and accurate, but coverage is generally too shallow to engage a reader with genuine interest in a topic, and the writing is often too dry to stimulate interest for a newcomer. Although there is a rough chronological order to the presentation, topics lurch between political and social concerns, and some topics, like the entry on scalawags and carpetbaggers, amount to little more than an extended definition. The wealth of full-page period photographs and engravings (some of which have been tinted) are likely to be this title's most powerful draw, and students trolling for ideas for research projects may well unearth a theme that piques their interest. Given the somewhat haphazard organization, the thorough indexing will be appreciated; a bibliography of print materials is included, but a list of websites is far too general (e.g., www.nps.gov; www.loc.gov) to be of much assistance without specific search strategies.