A concise edition of the authors' definitive history of the American West, updated and rewritten for a popular audience

"From the Caribbean to Canada and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, this marvelous survey spotlights the unexpected twists and turns that occurred when peoples met and mingled and how from these cultural encounters emerged today's American West. Hine and Faragher find in our frontier history the key to 'our common past' and a 'blueprint for our common future.'"—Stephen Aron, Department of History, UCLA

Published in 2000 to critical acclaim, The American West: A New Interpretive History quickly became the standard in college history classrooms. Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher here offer a concise edition of their classic text, freshly updated. Lauded for their lively and elegant writing, the authors provide a grand survey of the colorful history of the American West, from the first contacts between Native Americans and Europeans to the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Frontiers introduces the diverse peoples and cultures of the American West and explores how men and women of different ethnic groups were affected when they met, mingled, and often clashed. Hine and Faragher present the complexities of the American West—as frontier and region, real and imagined, old and new. Showcasing the distinctive voices and experiences of frontier characters, they explore topics ranging from early exploration to modern environmentalism, drawing expansively from a wide range of sources. With four galleries of fascinating illustrations drawn from Yale University's premier Collection of Western Americana, some published here for the first time, this book will be treasured by every reader with an interest in the unique saga of the American West.