Power and Place in the North American West

Power and Place in the North American West PDF Author: Richard White
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295802200
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Western historians continue to seek new ways of understanding the particular mixture of physical territory, human actions, outside influences, and unique expectations that has made the North American West what it is today. This collection of twelve essays tackles the subject of power and place from several angles�Indians and non-Indians, race and gender, environment and economy�to gain insight into major forces at work during two centuries of western history. The essays, related to one another by their concern with how power is exercised in, over, and by western places, cover a wide range of times and topics, from 18th-century Spanish New Mexico to 19th-century British Columbia to 20th-century Sun Valley and Los Angeles. They encompass analyses of the concept and rhetoric of race, theoretical speculations on gender and powerlessness, and insights on the causes of current environmental crises.

Power and Place in the North American West

Power and Place in the North American West PDF Author: Richard White
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295802200
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Get Book Here

Book Description
Western historians continue to seek new ways of understanding the particular mixture of physical territory, human actions, outside influences, and unique expectations that has made the North American West what it is today. This collection of twelve essays tackles the subject of power and place from several angles�Indians and non-Indians, race and gender, environment and economy�to gain insight into major forces at work during two centuries of western history. The essays, related to one another by their concern with how power is exercised in, over, and by western places, cover a wide range of times and topics, from 18th-century Spanish New Mexico to 19th-century British Columbia to 20th-century Sun Valley and Los Angeles. They encompass analyses of the concept and rhetoric of race, theoretical speculations on gender and powerlessness, and insights on the causes of current environmental crises.

The Atomic West

The Atomic West PDF Author: Bruce W. Hevly
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295800623
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
The Manhattan Project—the World War II race to produce an atomic bomb—transformed the entire country in myriad ways, but it did not affect each region equally. Acting on an enduring perception of the American West as an “empty” place, the U.S. government located a disproportionate number of nuclear facilities—particularly the ones most likely to spread pollution—in western states. The Manhattan Project manufactured plutonium at Hanford, Washington; designed and assembled bombs at Los Alamos, New Mexico; and detonated the world’s first atomic bomb at Alamagordo, New Mexico, on June 16, 1945. In the years that followed the war, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission selected additional western sites for its work. Many westerners initially welcomed the atom. Like federal officials, they, too, regarded their region as “empty,” or underdeveloped. Facilities to make, test, and base atomic weapons, sites to store nuclear waste, and even nuclear power plants were regarded as assets. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, regional attitudes began to change. At a variety of locales, ranging from Eskimo Alaska to Mormon Utah, westerners devoted themselves to resisting the atom and its effects on their environments and communities. Just as the atomic age had dawned in the American West, so its artificial sun began to set there. The Atomic West brings together contributions from several disciplines to explore the impact on the West of the development of atomic power from wartime secrecy and initial postwar enthusiasm to public doubts and protest in the 1970s and 1980s. An impressive example of the benefits of interdisciplinary studies on complex topics, The Atomic West advances our understanding of both regional history and the history of science, and does so with human communities as a significant focal point. The book will be of special interest to students and experts on the American West, environmental history, and the history of science and technology.

The North American West in the Twenty-First Century

The North American West in the Twenty-First Century PDF Author: Brenden W. Rensink
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496230434
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
This edited volume takes stories from the "modern West" of the late twentieth century and carefully pulls them toward the present--explicitly tracing continuity with and unexpected divergence from trajectories established in the 1980s and 1990s.

Land Use, Environment, and Social Change

Land Use, Environment, and Social Change PDF Author: Richard White
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295980540
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Whidbey and Camano, two of the largest of the numerous beautiful islands dotting Puget Sound, together form the major part of Island Country. Taking this county as a case study and following its history from Indian times to the present, Richard White explores the complex relationship between human induced environmental change and social change. This new edition of his classic study includes a new preface by the author and a foreword by William Cronon.

Civilization

Civilization PDF Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101548029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.

Transnational Indians in the North American West

Transnational Indians in the North American West PDF Author: Clarissa Confer
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1623493277
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
This collection of eleven original essays goes beyond traditional, border-driven studies to place the histories of Native Americans, indigenous peoples, and First Nation peoples in a larger context than merely that of the dominant nation. As Transnational Indians in the North American West shows, transnationalism can be expressed in various ways. To some it can be based on dependency, so that the history of the indigenous people of the American Southwest can only be understood in the larger context of Mexico and Central America. Others focus on the importance of movement between Indian and non-Indian worlds as Indians left their (reserved) lands to work, hunt, fish, gather, pursue legal cases, or seek out education, to name but a few examples. Conversely, even natives who remained on reserved lands were nonetheless transnational inasmuch as the reserves did not fully “belong” to them but were administered by a nation-state. Boundaries that scholars once viewed as impermeable, it turns out, can be quite porous. This book stands to be an important contribution to the scholarship that is increasingly breaking free of old boundaries.

The World of the American West

The World of the American West PDF Author: Gordon Morris Bakken
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136931600
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 665

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Book Description
The World of the American West is an innovative collection of original essays that brings the world of the American West to life, and conveys the distinctiveness of this diverse, constantly changing region. Twenty scholars incorporate the freshest research in the field to take the history of the American West out of its timeworn "Cowboys and Indians" stereotype right up into the major issues being discussed today, from water rights to the presence of the defense industry. Other topics covered in this heavily illustrated, highly accessible volume include the effects of leisure and tourism, western women, politics and politicians, Native Americans in the twentieth century, and of course, oil. With insight both informative and unexpected, The World of the American West offers perspectives on the latest developments affecting the modern American West, providing essential reading for all scholars and students of the field so that they may better understand the vibrant history of this globally significant, ever-evolving region of North America.

America's West

America's West PDF Author: David M. Wrobel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521192013
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
This book examines the regional history of the American West in relation to the rest of the United States, emphasizing cultural and political history.

Regionalism and the Humanities

Regionalism and the Humanities PDF Author: Timothy R. Mahoney
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803220464
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Although the framework of regionalist studies may seem to be crumbling under the weight of increasing globalization, this collection of seventeen essays makes clear that cultivating regionalism lies at the center of the humanist endeavor. With interdisciplinary contributions from poets and fiction writers, literary historians, musicologists, and historians of architecture, agriculture, and women, this volume implements some of the most innovative and intriguing approaches to the history and value of regionalism as a category for investigation in the humanities. In the volume’s inaugural essay, Annie Proulx discusses landscapes in American fiction, comments on how she constructs characters, and interprets current literary trends. Edward Watts offers a theory of region that argues for comparisons of the United States to other former colonies of Great Britain, including New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. Whether considering a writer's connection to region or the idea of place in exploring what is meant by regionalism, these essays uncover an enduring and evolving concept. Although the approaches and disciplines vary, all are framed within the fundamental premise of the humanities: the search to understand what it means to be human.

Bridging National Borders in North America

Bridging National Borders in North America PDF Author: Benjamin Johnson
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822392712
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Despite a shared interest in using borders to explore the paradoxes of state-making and national histories, historians of the U.S.-Canada border region and those focused on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands have generally worked in isolation from one another. A timely and important addition to borderlands history, Bridging National Borders in North America initiates a conversation between scholars of the continent’s northern and southern borderlands. The historians in this collection examine borderlands events and phenomena from the mid-nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth. Some consider the U.S.-Canada border, others concentrate on the U.S.-Mexico border, and still others take both regions into account. The contributors engage topics such as how mixed-race groups living on the peripheries of national societies dealt with the creation of borders in the nineteenth century, how medical inspections and public-health knowledge came to be used to differentiate among bodies, and how practices designed to channel livestock and prevent cattle smuggling became the model for regulating the movement of narcotics and undocumented people. They explore the ways that U.S. immigration authorities mediated between the desires for unimpeded boundary-crossings for day laborers, tourists, casual visitors, and businessmen, and the restrictions imposed by measures such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the 1924 Immigration Act. Turning to the realm of culture, they analyze the history of tourist travel to Mexico from the United States and depictions of the borderlands in early-twentieth-century Hollywood movies. The concluding essay suggests that historians have obscured non-national forms of territoriality and community that preceded the creation of national borders and sometimes persisted afterwards. This collection signals new directions for continental dialogue about issues such as state-building, national expansion, territoriality, and migration. Contributors: Dominique Brégent-Heald, Catherine Cocks, Andrea Geiger, Miguel Ángel González Quiroga, Andrew R. Graybill, Michel Hogue, Benjamin H. Johnson, S. Deborah Kang, Carolyn Podruchny, Bethel Saler, Jennifer Seltz, Rachel St. John, Lissa Wadewitz Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.