First published 1994
This anthology gathers voices from across centuries of western experience. Native American songs and chants open the collection, followed by explorer accounts from Lewis and Clark and John Wesley Powell's Colorado River expedition. Elizabeth Custer shares her frontier perspective while Mark Twain chronicles his adventures in Roughing It. Settlers describe their struggles on the Kansas frontier and Mormon pioneers building communities in unfamiliar territory. Willa Cather captures rural isolation in O Pioneers! while contemporary writers like Wallace Stegner and Ivan Doig redefine what calling the West home means today. Over 200 images accompany these texts, featuring art by George Catlin, Frederic Remington, Charles Russell, Albert Bierstadt, Georgia O'Keeffe, and David Hockney. The collection spans from early Native American drawings and explorer maps to landscapes and portraits of cowboys, miners, and hopeful pioneers, documenting how this region became the native home of American hope.
Genres: anthologies, 20th-century, american, 21st-century, american-history
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, historical-perspective
Setting: American West, Colorado River, Kansas, Mormon Territories
Period: Early Exploration, 19th Century, 20th Century, 21st Century
384 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster