Winning the Wild West: The Epic Saga of the American Frontier, 1800-1899

Journalist (and son of Wallace) Stegner undertakes the ambitious task of painting a panoramic picture of the American frontier in a single volume by weaving together brief essays and mini-essays on the highlights of westward expansion, corrected here and there for postcolonial sensitivities and complemented with reams of visual material. Though glossy and good-looking in a glorified textbook sort of way, the volume rarely ventures off the beaten path: it talks of Lewis and Clark, Sutter's Creek and Little Bighorn, but doesn't give much attention to weirder strands of history, or to potentially revealing narratives that often go unreported (i.e. any other than the standard tale of Manifest Destiny). The liberally placed visual accompaniment largely fails to deepen the story, mostly coming in the form of well-known illustrations and paintings (often rimmed with intrusive drop shadows) and scenic landscape photographs, almost always shot at the golden hour. There are interesting histories here, particularly for younger readers, but not much that's new, either in form or content.