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In Mark Twain and the American West, Joseph Coulombe maintains that for more than twenty-five years, Mark Twain deliberately manipulated contemporary conceptions of the American West to create and then modify a public image that won worldwide fame. He establishes the central role of the region in ...

In Mark Twain and the American West, Joseph Coulombe maintains that for more than twenty-five years, Mark Twain deliberately manipulated contemporary conceptions of the American West to create and then modify a public image that won worldwide fame. He establishes the central role of the region in the development of a persona that not only helped redefine American manhood and literary celebrity in the late nineteenth century, but also produced some of the most complex and challenging writings in the American canon. Coulombe sheds new light on previously underappreciated components of Twain's distinctly western persona. Gathering new evidence from contemporary newspapers, letters, literature, and advice manuals, Coulombe shows how Twain's persona in the early 1860s as a hard-drinking, low-living straight-talker was an implicit response to western conventions of manhood. He then traces the author's movement toward a more sophisticated public image, arguing that Twain characterized language and authorship in the same manner that he described western men: direct, bold, physical, even violent. In this way, Twain capitalized upon common images of the West to create himself as a new sort of western outlaw--one who wrote. Coulombe outlines Twain's struggle to find the proper balance between changing cultural attitudes toward male respectability and rebellion and his own shifting perceptions of the East and the West. Focusing on his unpredictable treatment of American Indians, Coulombe links Twain's enigmatic use of racial stereotypes in the West to Huck's treatment of Jim in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He argues that the repeated pattern not only illuminates the great moments in Huck'sjourney, but also clarifies inconsistencies within one of America's most important novels. Mark Twain and the American West is sure to generate new interest and discussion about Mark Twain and his influence. By understanding how

From Thomas Hart Benton's famous speech in the Senate when he argued that nonwhite civilizations must fall before the western expansion of white Americans to Black Elk's story of a way of life lost on the frozen ground at Wounded Knee, Gary Noy offers a representative sampling of the many Wests that ...

From Thomas Hart Benton's famous speech in the Senate when he argued that nonwhite civilizations must fall before the western expansion of white Americans to Black Elk's story of a way of life lost on the frozen ground at Wounded Knee, Gary Noy offers a representative sampling of the many Wests that historians have struggled to define for over a century. Distant Horizon chronicles the dusty world of the cowboy, the hardscrabble existence of the farmer and the settler, and the miner's vision of golden glory. It examines the independent nature of the explorer and mountain man and the sometimes heroic, sometimes cruel existence of the soldier. We hear the voices of those outside the mainstream of power - women and westerners of color - and explore the most tragic element of western history: the confinement, subjugation, and extermination of Native Americans. No other single volume provides as many readings on as many topics in the history of the American West.

In this study of late nineteenth-century moral reform, Peggy Pascoe examines four specific cases--a home for Chinese prostitutes in San Francisco, California; a home for polygamous Mormon women in Salt Lake City, Utah; a home for unmarried mothers in Denver, Colorado; and a program for American ...

In this study of late nineteenth-century moral reform, Peggy Pascoe examines four specific cases--a home for Chinese prostitutes in San Francisco, California; a home for polygamous Mormon women in Salt Lake City, Utah; a home for unmarried mothers in Denver, Colorado; and a program for American Indians on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska--to tell the story of the women who established missionary rescue homes for women in the American West. Focusing on two sets of relationships--those between women reformers and their male opponents, and those between women reformers and the various groups of women they sought to shelter--Pascoe traces the gender relations that framed the reformers' search for female moral authority, analyzes the interaction between women reformers and the women who entered the rescue homes, and raises provocative questions about historians' understanding of the dynamics of social feminism, social control, and intercultural relations.