THE LEGACY OF CONQUEST

The "settling" of the American West has been perceived throughout the world as a series of quaint, violent, and romantic adventures—but in fact, historian Patricia Nelson Limerick argues, the West has a history grounded primarily in economic reality; in hardheaded questions of profit, loss, competition, and consolidation. In this groundbreaking work she interprets the stories and the characters in a new way, emphasizaing how the trappers, traders, Indians, farmers, oilmen, cowboys, and sheriffs of the Old West "meant business" in more ways than one.