Overviews
Deverell, William. A Companion to the American West. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004.
Hine, Robert V., and John Mack Faragher. The American West: A New Interpretive History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.
Lamar, Howard, ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
Limerick, Patricia N. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: Norton, 1987.
Milner, Clyde, Carol O’Connor, and Martha Sandweiss, eds. The Oxford History of the American West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Nugent, Walter. Into the West: The Story of Its People. New York: Knopf, 1999.
Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt, 1920.
White, Richard. “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
Chapters 1: The view from Cahokia and 2: Empires and enclaves
Calloway, Colin G. One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.
Crosby, Alfred W., Jr. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Hämäläinen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. New York: Knopf, 2005.
Pauketat, Timothy R. Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi. New York: Viking Penguin, 2009.
Richter, Daniel. Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Taylor, Alan. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. New York: Penguin, 2001.
Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.
White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Chapter 3: Making the first American West
Aron, Stephen. How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Faragher, John Mack. Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer. New York: Holt, 1992.
Nugent, Walter. Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion. New York: Knopf, 2008.
Rohrbough, Malcolm J. Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775–1850. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.
Chapter 4: Taking the farther West
Aron, Stephen. American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border State. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Delay, Brian. War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
Hyde, Anne. Empires, Nations, and Families: A New History of the North American West, 1800–1860. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.
Rohrbough, Malcolm J. Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Unruh, John D. The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–1860. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1979.
Chapter 5: The whitening of the West
Brown, Richard Maxwell. No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Graybill, Andrew. Policing the Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier, 1875–1910. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
Jacoby, Karl. Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History. New York: Penguin, 2008.
West, Elliott. The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
Chapter 6: The watering of the West
Andrews, Thomas. Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Hundley, Norris, Jr. The Great Thirst: Californians and Water: A History. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. New York: Norton, 2011.
Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Chapter 7: The worldly West
Barkan, Elliott. From All Points: America’s Immigrant West, 1870–1952. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.
Gregory, James N. The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
Pomeroy, Earl. The American Far West in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990. New York: Norton, 1998.
Chapter 8: The view from Hollywood
Avila, Eric. Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
Braudy, Leo. The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.
Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. London: Verso, 1990.
Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Atheneum, 1992.
Stevenson, Brenda. The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the L.A. Riots. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.