Gunfighter Nation: Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America, The - Softcover

Slotkin, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806130318 ISBN 13: 9780806130316

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998

Synopsis

Gunfighter Nation completes Richard Slotkin’s trilogy, begun in Regeneration Through Violence and continued in Fatal Environment, on the myth of the American frontier. Slotkin examines an impressive array of sources - fiction, Hollywood westerns, and the writings of Hollywood figures and Washington leaders - to show how the racialist theory of Anglo-Saxon ascendance and superiority (embodied in Theodore Roosevelt’s The Winning of the West), rather than Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis of the closing of the frontier, exerted the most influence in popular culture and government policy making in the twentieth century. He argues that Roosevelt’s view of the frontier myth provided the justification for most of America’s expansionist policies, from Roosevelt’s own Rough Riders to Kennedy’s counterinsurgency and Johnson’s war in Vietnam.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Slotkin is Olin Professor of English and Director of American Studies at Wesleyan University. He is the author of Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 and Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of Frontier in Twentieth-Century America, published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0806130318
• ISBN 13: 9780806130316
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 864