Gunfighter Nation

Gunfighter Nation PDF

Author: Richard Slotkin

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 868

ISBN-13: 9780806130316

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Examines the ways in which the frontier myth influences American culture and politics, drawing on fiction, western films, and political writing

Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees

Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees PDF

Author: Sarah F. Wakefield

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2015-01-28

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 0806148977

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The Dakota War (1862) was a searing event in Minnesota history as well as a signal event in the lives of Dakota people. Sarah F. Wakefield was caught up in this revolt. A young doctor’s wife and the mother of two small children, Wakefield published her unusual account of the war and her captivity shortly after the hanging of thirty-eight Dakotas accused of participation in the "Sioux uprising." Among those hanged were Chaska (We-Chank-Wash-ta-don-pee), a Mdewakanton Dakota who had protected her and her children during the upheaval. In a distinctive and compelling voice, Wakefield blames the government for the war and then relates her and her family’s ordeal, as well as Chaska’s and his family’s help and ultimate sacrifice. This is the first fully annotated modern edition of Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees. June Namias’s extensive introduction and notes describe the historical and ethnographic background of Dakota-white relations in Minnesota and place Wakefield’s narrative in the context of other captivity narratives.

Regeneration Through Violence

Regeneration Through Violence PDF

Author: Richard Slotkin

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2024-01-23

Total Pages: 816

ISBN-13: 1504090357

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National Book Award Finalist: A study of national myths, lore, and identity that “will interest all those concerned with American cultural history” (American Political Science Review). Winner of the American Historical Association’s Albert J. Beveridge Award for Best Book in American History In Regeneration Through Violence, the first of his trilogy on the mythology of the American West, historian and cultural critic Richard Slotkin demonstrates how the attitudes and traditions that shape American culture evolved from the social and psychological anxieties of European settlers struggling in a strange new world to claim the land and displace Native Americans. Using the popular literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries—including captivity narratives, the Daniel Boone tales, and the writings of Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Melville—Slotkin traces the full development of this myth. “Deserves the careful attention of everyone concerned with the history of American culture or literature. ”—Comparative Literature “Slotkin’s large aim is to understand what kind of national myths emerged from the American frontier experience. . . . [He] discusses at length the newcomers’ search for an understanding of their first years in the New World [and] emphasizes the myths that arose from the experiences of whites with Indians and with the land.” —Western American Literature

The Fatal Environment

The Fatal Environment PDF

Author: Richard Slotkin

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2024-01-23

Total Pages: 994

ISBN-13: 1504090365

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A two-time National Book Award finalist’s “ambitious and provocative” look at Custer’s Last Stand, capitalism, and the rise of the cowboys-and-Indians legend (The New York Review of Books). In The Fatal Environment, historian Richard Slotkin demonstrates how the myth of frontier expansion and subjugation of Native Americans helped justify the course of America’s rise to wealth and power. Using Custer’s Last Stand as a metaphor for what Americans feared might happen if the frontier should be closed and the “savage” element be permitted to dominate the “civilized,” Slotkin shows the emergence by 1890 of a mythos redefined to help Americans respond to the confusion and strife of industrialization and imperial expansion. “A clearly written, challenging and provocative work that should prove enormously valuable to serious students of American history.” —The New York Times “[An] arresting hypothesis.” —Henry Nash Smith, American Historical Review

Commie Cowboys

Commie Cowboys PDF

Author: Ryan W. McMaken

Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute

Published: 2014-04-28

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13:

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The Western genre has long been associated with right-wing and libertarian politics, and is said to promote individualism and free-market economics. In a new look at the Western, however, Ryan McMaken shows that the Western is in fact often anti-capitalist, and in many ways, the genre attacks the dominant ideology of nineteenth-century America: classical liberalism. The classical Westerns of the mid-twentieth century often feature wealthy capitalist villains who oppress the cowardly and defenseless shopkeepers and farmers of the frontier. The gunfighter, a representative of the law and order provided by the nation-state, intervenes to provide safety and justice. In addition to attacks on capitalism, the Western attacks other prized values of the bourgeois middle classes including Christianity, education and urbanization. McMaken examines these themes as used in the films of John Ford, Anthony Mann, and Howard Hawks. These pioneers of the classical Westerns are then contrasted with later innovators such as Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, and Clint Eastwood. Also included are discussions of the role of the LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE series, Victorian literature, and the nature of crime on the historical frontier. With a foreword by Paul A. Cantor, author of GILLIGAN UNBOUND and THE INVISIBLE HAND IN POPULAR CULTURE.

Abe

Abe PDF

Author: Richard Slotkin

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2001-03

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 9780805066395

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A stunning work of historical imagination, Abe immerses the reader in the past Abraham Lincoln kept hidden: the isolating poverty and frontier violence that shaped his character. Marked by the death of his beloved mother and the struggle to keep reading and learning in the face of his father's fierce disapproval, Abe perseveres, growing into the man who changed the course of American history. Abe comes of age in the course of a dramatic flatboat journey down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Along the way, Abe and his companions encounter slavery firsthand and experience the violence -- and the pleasures -- of rough river towns, plantations, and the cities of Natchez and New Orleans. Numerous historical figures make appearances alongside the colorful characters of the Mississippi: preachers and vigilantes, planters and thieves, prostitutes and lady reformers. Transformed by what he has seen and done, Abe returns to make his final break with his father and to step out of the wilderness into New Salem -- and history. Richard Slotkin's Abe draws deeply on historical scholarship, but it is not biography. Instead, it is a vivid, persuasive re-creation of the life young Lincoln might have lived, and of the people, scenes, and influences that helped produce the character and conscience of the man often called the greatest of all Americans.

Planet of the Apes as American Myth

Planet of the Apes as American Myth PDF

Author: Eric Greene

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2006-03-31

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0786426632

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How do political conflicts shape popular culture? This book explores that question by analyzing how the Planet of the Apes films functioned both as entertaining adventures and as apocalyptic political commentary. Informative and thought provoking, the book demonstrates how this enormously popular series of secular myths used images of racial and ecological crisis to respond to events like the Cold War, the race riots of the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement, the Black Power movement, and the Vietnam War. The work utilizes interviews with key filmmakers and close readings of the five Apes films and two television series to trace the development of the series' theme of racial conflict in the context of the shifting ideologies of race during the sixties and seventies. The book also observes that today, amid growing concerns over race relations, the resurgent popularity of Apes and Twentieth Century--Fox's upcoming film may again make Planet of the Apes a pop culture phenomenon that asks who we are and where we are going. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

The Western Reader

The Western Reader PDF

Author: Jim Kitses

Publisher: Limelight

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13:

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This lavishly-illustrated collection of writings on western movies covers close to a century of American cinematic achievement and includes almost a half-century of essays, commentary, and interviews. The history, mythology, and landscape of the western are skillfully explored.