Robert V. Hine - Böcker

A concise edition of the authors' definitive history of the American West, updated and rewritten for a popular audience"From the Caribbean to Canada and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, this marvelous survey spotlights the unexpected twists and turns that occurred when peoples met and mingled and how from these cultural encounters emerged today's American West. Hine and Faragher find in our frontier history the key to 'our common past' and a 'blueprint for our common future.'"—Stephen Aron, Department of History, UCLAPublished in 2000 to critical acclaim, The American West: A New Interpretive History quickly became the standard in college history classrooms. Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher here offer a concise edition of their classic text, freshly updated. Lauded for their lively and elegant writing, the authors provide a grand survey of the colorful history of the American West, from the first contacts between Native Americans and Europeans to the beginning of the twenty-first century.Frontiers introduces the diverse peoples and cultures of the American West and explores how men and women of different ethnic groups were affected when they met, mingled, and often clashed. Hine and Faragher present the complexities of the American West—as frontier and region, real and imagined, old and new. Showcasing the distinctive voices and experiences of frontier characters, they explore topics ranging from early exploration to modern environmentalism, drawing expansively from a wide range of sources. With four galleries of fascinating illustrations drawn from Yale University's premier Collection of Western Americana, some published here for the first time, this book will be treasured by every reader with an interest in the unique saga of the American West.

Behind the commune movement today lies an impulse for a simpler, less harried existence that has its roots deep in American history. During the last hundred years, California has contributed to the Utopian heritage more colonies than any other American state. From varied backgrounds—religious, secular, co-operative, socialistic, Theosophical, Marxian—each new society experimented with marriage, the raising of children, education, work, religion, or government.

He knew he was going blind. Yet he finished graduate school, became a history professor, and wrote books about the American West. Then, nearly fifty, Robert Hine lost his vision completely. Fifteen years later, a risky eye operation restored partial vision, returning Hine to the world of the sighted. 'The trauma seemed instructive enough' for him to begin a journal. That journal is the heart of "Second Sight", a sensitively written account of Hine's journey into darkness and out again. The first parts are told simply, with little anguish. The emotion comes when sight returns; like a child he discovers the world anew - the intensity of colors, the sadness of faces grown older, the renewed excitement of sex and the body. With the understanding and insights that come from living on both sides of the divide, Hine ponders the meaning of blindness. His search is enriched by a discourse with other blind writers, humorist James Thurber, novelist Eleanor Clark, poet Jorge Luis Borges, among others.With them he shares thoughts on the acceptance and advantages of blindness, resentment of the blind, the reluctance with sex, and the psychological depression that often follows the recovery of sight. Hine's blindness was the altered state in which to learn and live, and his deliverance from blindness the spur to seek and share its lessons. What he found makes a moving story that embraces all of us - those who can see and those who cannot.

When it was first published under the title, Edward Kern and American Expansion, Ray Allen Billington called this book ""one of the most readable, pleasant, exciting books about the West that I have ever known,"" and Allen Nevins called it ""a contribution of the first importance to Western History.""This absorbing account has become a classic, indispensable to understanding America's inexorable drive westward to the Pacific - and beyond. This second edition provides a new preface, additional maps and illustrations, and a revised bibliographical essay.In 1845, Edward Meyer Kern, a native Philadelphia and a promising young painter, joined John Charles Frémont on his Third Expedition to the West. Kern would serve as the famed explorer's artist, topographer, and cartographer. On the arduous journey through Nevada to Monterey, he mapped routes that the settlers would follow west. When the expedition became embroiled in the struggle for California and the United States went to war against Mexico, Kern was placed in command of Fort Sutter. Through all the turmoil, he continued to paint, producing remarkable scenes of America's western territories.Kern persuaded his brothers Benjamin and Richard to join him on Frémont's disastrous Fourth Expedition to seek a railroad route to the Pacific. Later Edward served in the U.S. Navy on the Ringgold-Rodgers and Brooke expeditions to Japan, Siberia, and various Pacific islands and helped prepare the first accurate charts of the sealanes to China. His enthusiasm, dedication, and skill with pen and brush helped Kern elevate the art of American exploration.