| The American West: The Invention of a Myth Contributor(s): Murdoch, David Hamilton (Author) |
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ISBN: 0874173698 ISBN-13: 9780874173697 Publisher: University of Nevada Press OUR PRICE: $20.85 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 2001 Annotation: David H. Murdoch argues that Americans' beliefs about the West have little to do with history and amount to a modern functional myth. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - 19th Century - History | United States - State & Local - West (ak, Ca, Co, Hi, Id, Mt, Nv, Ut, Wy) - History | Historiography |
| Dewey: 978.033 |
| LCCN: 00057769 |
| Lexile Measure: 1340 |
| Physical Information: 0.64" H x 5.44" W x 8.52" (0.47 lbs) 148 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Western U.S. - Chronological Period - 19th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Americans have chosen to invest one small part of their history, the settlement of the western wilderness, with extraordinary significance. The lost frontier of the 1800s remains not merely a source of excitement and romance but of inspiration, providing a set of unique and imperishable core-values: individualism, self-reliance, and a clear sense of right and wrong. As a construct of the imagination, our creation of the West is exceptional. Since this construct has little to do with history, David H. Murdoch argues that our beliefs about the West amount to a modern functional myth. In addition to presenting a sustained analysis of how and why the myth originated, Murdoch demonstrates that the myth was invented, for the most part deliberately, and then outgrew the purposes of its inventors. The American West answers the questions that have too often been either begged or ignored. Why should the West become the focus for myth in the first place, and why, given the long process of western settlement, is the cattleman's West so central and the cowboy, of all prototypes, the mythic hero? And why should the myth have retained its potency up to the last decade of the twentieth century? |