| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 236 words from this article are provided below; about 389 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier, 1875–1910. By Andrew R. Graybill. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. xvi, 277 pp. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-8032-6002-3.)
Andrew R. Graybill has written a well- researched and comprehensive study comparing how two famous police agencies—the Texas Rangers and the Canadian Mounties— dealt with the many and varied problems on the ever-changing last frontier of the Great Plains. From Graybill's comments in the acknowledgements, the reader could think that the emphasis will be on the Rangers during those transitional decades, as the author used thirteen U.S. libraries and just two in Canada. But, while his research time was spent mainly south of the forty-ninth parallel, his work presents a balanced picture of both police forces facing the harsh realities and amazing changes in the late nineteenth-century West.	1
Though some U.S.-Canadian comparisons have been made in the past—the Native American–Anglo confrontations, for example— nothing published substantially links the two police establishments. Held in the grip of Hollywood movies, television series, and dime novels, the histories of these two popular agencies have suffered through the exaggerations of popular culture—"one Ranger can handle that problem" and "they always get their man." Historians have not been innocent in perpetuating that entrenched mythology. But more and more scholars such as Robert M. Utley in his Lone Star Justice (2002) have given a more balanced assessment.	. . .

There are about 389 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.