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Book Review
Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West. By Patricia Nelson Limerick. (New York: Norton, 2000. 384 pp. $26.95, ISBN 0-393-03788-6.)
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Just when you think you have Patricia Nelson Limerick and the new western history figured out, something surprising happens. Limerick's new book, Something in the Soil, takes us to some unfamiliar places. We find Mormons providing lessons on ethnic diversity and Frederick Jackson Turner being welcomed back into the historical fold. The book contains sixteen essays, mostly written in the past five years and published other places, but it adds up to more than a set of essays. In addition to providing the wit and humor that always make reading Limerick a pleasure, in this book she operates as a serious historian writing about things that matter. It is not an easy book to categorize, the title does not reflect the book's significance, and the essays are uneven, but that is a bit like complaining that the colors in the Grand Canyon are too red. Every essay in the book offers something important in clear language that will attract a wide range of readers. Few historians present material that both undergraduates and experts in the field can argue about, and Limerick is one of them. |
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