Log cabins and wagon trains, cowboys and Indians, Buffalo Bill and General Custer. These and other frontier images pervade our lives where they attach themselves to products from pancake syrup to cologne, blue jeans to banks. This work explores our national preoccupation with this uniquely American image.
"In this beautifully illustrated volume, two of the nation's leading western historians offer brilliant and provocative insight into why the frontier has had such a longstanding and problematic hold on American national thought. Their book is a pleasure both to read and to look at and deserves a wide audience."-William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"The authors . . . demonstrate a keen awareness of the critical and complex relationship between history and legend in the American West and its consequences for modern Americans. Finely crafted with scholarship and good humor, their thoughtful and provocative ruminations lend fresh insight into the shaping and propagation of America's frontier legacy."-B. Byron Price, National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center
