Something in the Soil: Field-Testing the New Western History - Hardcover

Limerick, Patricia Nelson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393037886 ISBN 13: 9780393037883

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000

Synopsis

A wide-ranging collection of essays and arguments from the New West's landmark historian. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the American West is a region of great views and great friction, vigorous growth and equally vigorous conflict. In Something in the Soil, Patricia Nelson Limerick continues the project she began with The Legacy of Conquest, traveling far outside the usual academic circles to put Western history to use in reckoning with current dilemmas. Whether the topic is the changing mission of the national parks, the notion of "culture" as a sort of Frankenstein's monster, the resurgent boom in Western gold mining, the unexamined--and increasingly ineffective--rituals of American environmentalists, or current struggles over the standing of the "Great White Men" of the frontier past, Limerick operates on the principle that history is an active presence in the West today, quite literally "something in the soil." Her irreverence for conventional pieties coexists with her respect for the American West's long history as a magnet for dreams of a better life.

About this title

About the Author:

Patricia Nelson Limerick is a professor of history and chair of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Review:

No one write more shrewdly or with more elegance about our shared past than Patricia Limerick does-and no one has a better time doing it. Something in the Soil is vintage Limerick, which means that easterners as well as westerners are guaranteed a good time, too. -- Geoffrey C. Ward, editor of The West

Patricia Limerick has done it again! No one else combines so many powerful insights with so much good humor in writing so well about the history of the American West. Something in the Soil will be cause for celebration among Limerick's fans, and those who have not yet encountered her special brand of history will find this an ideal introduction to her work. -- William Cronon, author of Nature's Metropolis

Patricia Limerick is simply one of the best writers alive-and the astonishing thing is that she thinks as clearly and logically as she writes. -- Garry Wills, author of A Necessary Evil and St. Augustine

Patricia Nelson Limerick has been a dominant voice among New Western Historians for close to two decades. In Something in the Soil, she delivers rigorous, thought-out opinions, often iconoclastic, always on the side of inclusiveness, in vivid, memorable prose. This book is a must for those who want to understand recent thinking about the past of the American West, and its future. -- William Kittredge, author of Hole in the Sky

Patricia Nelson Limerick is an original, learned, passionate writer. Everything she writes about the history of the American West deserves attention. -- Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove

Patty Limerick writes like a whirlwind, full of sass and great intelligence, and plenty of humor between the lines. Something in the Soil gives us Western history with a twist: wit, serious honesty, and the wisdom to break shibboleths without malice aforethought. Her history is grim, it is funny, it is groundbreaking and original. Her mind is so quick that no paragraph in the book will ever gather a speck of dust. All is imbued with compassion, and a great deal of charm. Here is a live-wire writer and historian at the top of her game. -- John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War

Something in the Soil is truly an extraordinary book of essays on the American West, past and present__in its way a very worthy successor to Limerick's The Legacy of Conquest, for it discusses aspects of the American West never treated before. But equally significant, the essays reflect Limerick's lively dialogue with hundreds of scholars, critics, and experts in a dozen fields. As a result, Something in the Soil promises to be one of the most original, revealing, provocative and lively treatments of the American West to appear in a decade. This is a must for understanding the American West in the twenty-first century. -- Howard R. Lamar, editor of The New Encyclopedia of the American West

There is really no substitute for being in the audience when Patty Limerick speaks, but Something in the Soil is the next best thing to the pleasure of her company. These essays are often funny and entertaining, but they are also probing, questioning, and thoughtful. People who think Patty Limerick is too critical of the West and miss her deep passion and commitment to the place and all its pleasure are, I am afraid, terminally tone deaf. -- Richard White, author of "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A History of the American West

What distinguishes Limerick from other prominent Western historians is her inimitable prose. Limerick boldly breaks all the rules of academic writing. -- The New York Times Book Review, Lauren F. Winner

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0393037886
• ISBN 13: 9780393037883
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384