Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion (History of the American West) (Hardcover)
In Continental Reckoning renowned historian Elliott West presents a sweeping narrative of the American West and its vital role in the transformation of the nation. In the 1840s, by which time the United States had expanded to the Pacific, what would become the West was home to numerous vibrant Native cultures and vague claims by other nations. Thirty years later it was organized into states and territories and bound into the nation and world by an infrastructure of rails, telegraph wires, and roads and by a racial and ethnic order, with its Indigenous peoples largely dispossessed and confined to reservations.
Unprecedented exploration uncovered the West’s extraordinary resources, beginning with the discovery of gold in California within days of the United States acquiring the territory following the Mexican-American War. As those resources were developed, often by the most modern methods and through modern corporate enterprise, half of the contiguous United States was physically transformed. Continental Reckoning guides the reader through the rippling, multiplying changes wrought in the western half of the country, arguing that these changes should be given equal billing with the Civil War in this crucial transition of national life.
As the West was acquired, integrated into the nation, and made over physically and culturally, the United States shifted onto a course of accelerated economic growth, a racial reordering and redefinition of citizenship, engagement with global revolutions of science and technology, and invigorated involvement with the larger world. The creation of the West and the emergence of modern America were intimately related. Neither can be understood without the other. With masterful prose and a critical eye, West presents a fresh approach to the dawn of the American West, one of the most pivotal periods of American history.
Unprecedented exploration uncovered the West’s extraordinary resources, beginning with the discovery of gold in California within days of the United States acquiring the territory following the Mexican-American War. As those resources were developed, often by the most modern methods and through modern corporate enterprise, half of the contiguous United States was physically transformed. Continental Reckoning guides the reader through the rippling, multiplying changes wrought in the western half of the country, arguing that these changes should be given equal billing with the Civil War in this crucial transition of national life.
As the West was acquired, integrated into the nation, and made over physically and culturally, the United States shifted onto a course of accelerated economic growth, a racial reordering and redefinition of citizenship, engagement with global revolutions of science and technology, and invigorated involvement with the larger world. The creation of the West and the emergence of modern America were intimately related. Neither can be understood without the other. With masterful prose and a critical eye, West presents a fresh approach to the dawn of the American West, one of the most pivotal periods of American history.
Elliott West is Alumni Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Arkansas. He is the author of numerous books, including The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story and The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado, winner of the Francis Parkman Prize and PEN Center Award.
"By the final chapter of Continental Reckoning, the reader should pause and realize they have read one of the most important contributions to the American historiography published in the past half-century. Historians of America and the West will recognize that Elliott West, one of the most respected scholars in his field the past 40 years, has accomplished a great deal in his career, but will remember Continental Reckoning as his master work, truly a magnum opus of his highly lauded scholarly career."—Stuart Rosebrook, True West
"Elliott West's Continental Reckoning vividly shows the importance of looking at the American West when studying the Civil War era. West makes sweeping arguments crucial to advancing Civil War West historiography, and his accessible writing style also makes the read enjoyable for the general public interested in the American West or nineteenth-century U.S. history more broadly. Rather than seeing the West as a "safety valve" for the East, Continental Reckoning demonstrates how the region became inextricably linked to the rise of the modern and robust U.S. nation state."—John R. Legg, Civil War Monitor
"The West is a big canvas. West uses brush strokes small and large to depict his engaging and thought-provoking perspective."—Tom Carpenter, RoundUp Magazine
"A comprehensive, lucid, and often surprising history of western settlement in America."—Kirkus Reviews, starred
"Readers who appreciate history and are privileged by having been born and lived in the Western United States should plan to allocate an appropriate portion of their remaining time to perusal of Continental Reckoning. They will be amazed by the impact which our region has exerted upon the development of both our own country and the rest of today's global community."—J. Kemper Campbell, Lincoln Journal Star
"Continental Reckoning is massive and brilliantly constructed, scholarly and literary, meant to be read beyond academic conferences by a public that—in these contentious times—needs to understand America's past."—David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express
"Westerners will do well to have this new anthology handy as a standard reference work of the expansionist period."—John Monnett, Denver Posse of Westerners
“Encyclopedic in its coverage, wonderfully written, full of revealing details, shrewd and funny in its analysis, Continental Reckoning will become the standard work on the creation of the American West. Elliott West remains astute and fair in covering a place and period often reduced to ideology and polemic. No one knows the nineteenth-century American West better than he does.”—Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896
“Vivid and compelling, Continental Reckoning is a sweeping history of how a dynamic region was made and remade in the mid-nineteenth century. . . . Writing with great insight and wit, Elliott West proves once again why he is one of the preeminent historians of a region that has so often been the focus of national aspirations and anxieties. Continental Reckoning is an authoritative volume and a must-read for anyone interested in western and American history.”—Megan Kate Nelson, author of Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America
“With style, clarity, and exquisite examples, Elliott West has obliterated our national just-so story in which the West just naturally appeared. Using newly confident governments and powerful technologies, Americans mowed down some people and built up others to create a very particular nineteenth-century West. It’s quite a story.”—Anne F. Hyde, author of Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West
"Elliott West's Continental Reckoning vividly shows the importance of looking at the American West when studying the Civil War era. West makes sweeping arguments crucial to advancing Civil War West historiography, and his accessible writing style also makes the read enjoyable for the general public interested in the American West or nineteenth-century U.S. history more broadly. Rather than seeing the West as a "safety valve" for the East, Continental Reckoning demonstrates how the region became inextricably linked to the rise of the modern and robust U.S. nation state."—John R. Legg, Civil War Monitor
"The West is a big canvas. West uses brush strokes small and large to depict his engaging and thought-provoking perspective."—Tom Carpenter, RoundUp Magazine
"A comprehensive, lucid, and often surprising history of western settlement in America."—Kirkus Reviews, starred
"Readers who appreciate history and are privileged by having been born and lived in the Western United States should plan to allocate an appropriate portion of their remaining time to perusal of Continental Reckoning. They will be amazed by the impact which our region has exerted upon the development of both our own country and the rest of today's global community."—J. Kemper Campbell, Lincoln Journal Star
"Continental Reckoning is massive and brilliantly constructed, scholarly and literary, meant to be read beyond academic conferences by a public that—in these contentious times—needs to understand America's past."—David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express
"Westerners will do well to have this new anthology handy as a standard reference work of the expansionist period."—John Monnett, Denver Posse of Westerners
“Encyclopedic in its coverage, wonderfully written, full of revealing details, shrewd and funny in its analysis, Continental Reckoning will become the standard work on the creation of the American West. Elliott West remains astute and fair in covering a place and period often reduced to ideology and polemic. No one knows the nineteenth-century American West better than he does.”—Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896
“Vivid and compelling, Continental Reckoning is a sweeping history of how a dynamic region was made and remade in the mid-nineteenth century. . . . Writing with great insight and wit, Elliott West proves once again why he is one of the preeminent historians of a region that has so often been the focus of national aspirations and anxieties. Continental Reckoning is an authoritative volume and a must-read for anyone interested in western and American history.”—Megan Kate Nelson, author of Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America
“With style, clarity, and exquisite examples, Elliott West has obliterated our national just-so story in which the West just naturally appeared. Using newly confident governments and powerful technologies, Americans mowed down some people and built up others to create a very particular nineteenth-century West. It’s quite a story.”—Anne F. Hyde, author of Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West