Global West, American frontier
Wrobel, David M.
Global West, American frontier travel, empire, and exceptionalism from manifest destiny to the Great Depression / [electronic resource] : David M. Wrobel. - Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press, 2013. - 1 online resource (pages cm.) - Calvin P. Horn lectures in western history and culture .
Includes bibliographical references and index.
"This book examines how travel writers viewed the American West from the age of Manifest Destiny through the Great Depression. In the nineteenth century, the West was often presented as one developing frontier among many; in the twentieth century, travel writers often searched for American frontier distinctiveness"--Provided by publisher"-- "This thoughtful examination of a century of travel writing about the American West overturns a variety of popular and academic stereotypes. Looking at both European and American travelers' accounts of the West, from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America to William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, David Wrobel offers a counternarrative to the nation's romantic entanglement with its western past and suggests the importance of some long-overlooked authors, lively and perceptive witnesses to our history who deserve new attention.Prior to the professionalization of academic disciplines, travel writers found a wide and respectful audience for their reports on history, geography, and the natural world, in addition to reporting on aboriginal cultures before there was such a discipline as anthropology. In recent decades travel writers have not received much respect in the academy, but Wrobel rescues this lively genre, demonstrating that travel writers offered an understanding of the West considerably more complex than the notion of the mythic West promoted to support Manifest Destiny in the nineteenth century and American exceptionalism in the twentieth"--
9780826353719
HISTORY / United States / 20th Century.
HISTORY / United States / 19th Century.
HISTORY / Social History.
Travel writing--Historiography.
West (U.S.)--Public opinion.
West (U.S.)--Historiography.
West (U.S.)--Description and travel--History.
Electronic books.
F595.3 / .W76 2013
978/.02
Global West, American frontier travel, empire, and exceptionalism from manifest destiny to the Great Depression / [electronic resource] : David M. Wrobel. - Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press, 2013. - 1 online resource (pages cm.) - Calvin P. Horn lectures in western history and culture .
Includes bibliographical references and index.
"This book examines how travel writers viewed the American West from the age of Manifest Destiny through the Great Depression. In the nineteenth century, the West was often presented as one developing frontier among many; in the twentieth century, travel writers often searched for American frontier distinctiveness"--Provided by publisher"-- "This thoughtful examination of a century of travel writing about the American West overturns a variety of popular and academic stereotypes. Looking at both European and American travelers' accounts of the West, from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America to William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, David Wrobel offers a counternarrative to the nation's romantic entanglement with its western past and suggests the importance of some long-overlooked authors, lively and perceptive witnesses to our history who deserve new attention.Prior to the professionalization of academic disciplines, travel writers found a wide and respectful audience for their reports on history, geography, and the natural world, in addition to reporting on aboriginal cultures before there was such a discipline as anthropology. In recent decades travel writers have not received much respect in the academy, but Wrobel rescues this lively genre, demonstrating that travel writers offered an understanding of the West considerably more complex than the notion of the mythic West promoted to support Manifest Destiny in the nineteenth century and American exceptionalism in the twentieth"--
9780826353719
HISTORY / United States / 20th Century.
HISTORY / United States / 19th Century.
HISTORY / Social History.
Travel writing--Historiography.
West (U.S.)--Public opinion.
West (U.S.)--Historiography.
West (U.S.)--Description and travel--History.
Electronic books.
F595.3 / .W76 2013
978/.02