From the Mississippi west to the Pacific, from border to border north and south, here is the first thorough overview of novelists, historians, and artists of the modern American West. Examining a full century of cultural and intellectual forces at work, a leading authority on the twentieth-century West brings his formidable talents to bear in this pioneering work.

Etulain casts a wide net in his new book. He discusses novelists from Jack London to John Steinbeck, and on to Joan Didion. He covers historians from Frederick Jackson Turner to Earl Pomeroy and Patricia Nelson Limerick, and artists from Frederic Remington and Charles Russell to Georgia O'Keefe and R. C. Gorman. The author places emphasis on women painters and authors such as Mary Hallock Foote, Mary Austin, Willa Cather, and Judith Baca.

He also stresses important works of ethnic writers, including Leslie Marmon Silko, Rudolfo Anaya, and Amy Tan.