David Alexander Smith – författare

For an element so firmly fixed in American culture, the frontier myth is surprisingly flexible. How else to explain its having taken two such different guises in the twentieth century - the progressive, forward-looking politics of Rough Rider president Teddy Roosevelt and the conservative, old-fashioned character and Cold War politics of Ronald Reagan? This is the conundrum at the heart of Cowboy Presidents, which explores the deployment and consequent transformation of the frontier myth by four U.S. presidents: Theodore Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.Behind the shape-shifting of this myth, historian David A. Smith finds major events in American and world history that have made various aspects of the 'Old West' frontier more relevant, and more useful, for promoting radically different political ideologies and agendas. And these divergent adaptations of frontier symbolism have altered the frontier myth. Theodore Roosevelt, with his vigorous pursuit of an activist federal government, helped establish a version of the frontier myth that today would be considered liberal. But then, Smith shows, a series of events from the Lyndon Johnson through Jimmy Carter presidencies - including Vietnam, race riots, and stagflation - seemed to give the lie to the progressive frontier myth.In the wake of these crises, Smith's analysis reveals, the entire structure and popular representation of frontier symbols and images in American politics shifted dramatically from left to right, and from liberal to conservative, with profound implications for the history of American thought and presidential politics. The now popular idea that 'frontier American' leaders and politicians are naturally Republicans with conservative ideals flows directly from the Reagan era.Cowboy Presidents gives us a new, clarifying perspective on how Americans shape and understand their national identity and sense of purpose; at the same time, reflecting on the essential mutability of a quintessentially national myth, the book suggests that the next iteration of the frontier myth may well be on the horizon.

Book 3 of the Future Boston series A century from now, Boston is like no other place on Earth: an enormous Cube containing millions of human and alien beings. Boston is slowly sinking, but it's also the site of Earth's only interstellar port—a gateway that has brought dozens of extraterrestrial races to the Cube. Beverly O'Meara is a private detective, a finder of lost people and things. Akktry, her partner, is a small, sharp-clawed animal that has an inhuman affinity with the past, able to recreate the history of any place or person from the remains of the present. A useful talent for a detective… Especially since the most powerful—and hated—woman in the Cube has hired Beverly to track down her missing daughter. Especially since Diana Sherwood's trail leads straight into the Basement, the oldest, lowest, most dangerous part of Boston. The part below sea level. The part you can down in… Reviews: "e;In the Cube is David Alexander Smith's best book.… Not only do his humans live and breathe, but he has drawn some of the strangest and most convincing aliens you'll ever meet."e; —Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning author James Patrick Kelly