| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.4 | The History Cooperative

*The American West: A Concise History.* Problems in American History. By Anne M. Butler and Michael J. Lansing. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. xiv + 242 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $32.95, paper.)
Writing a text on the history of the American West is not what it used to be. Typically, a survey would require the author to digest and synthesize the leading recent monographs and previous texts in the field, as well as conceptualize the direction the field's history has gone. The issue becomes much more complex when a topical area either has gone through a period of substantial sustained productivity and growth or is in ferment when a traditional doctrine has been transcended by new concepts. For the history of the American West, both have occurred.	1
Anne Butler and Michael Lansing have given their best then to a difficult task—that of writing a readable and workable history of the American West. The American West follows the works of Frederick Jackson Turner, Frederick Merk, Ray Allen Billington, Robert Hine, John Mack Faragher, and Richard White, among others. Butler and Lansing outline three goals for their text: writing a concise history, incorporating the latest scholarship, and sampling secondary and original literature as well as electronic sources. All of these goals are admirable and have in various ways been achieved.	. . .

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