| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Joy S. Kasson. Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History. New York: Hill and Wang. 2000. Pp. ix, 319. $27.00.

Joy S. Kasson divides her book into two parts: a chronological section called "Performances," and a topically arranged portion called "Perspectives." "Performances" traces "Buffalo Bill" Cody's life from inauspicious beginnings, to an unspectacular first phase of his show spent before American audiences from 1883–1887, followed by a triumphant tour of Europe and spellbinding success at the Columbian Exposition. After 1893, showman Cody squandered his resources by playing the part of a tycoon in the Gilded Age. Part two of the book, "Perspectives," concentrates on Indians in the Wild West show and includes a chapter on "Memory and Modernity." 1

The author apparently split the book to document the "fictionalizing" of Buffalo Bill and the Western experience through the Wild West show in part one, and added the second section to study the entertainment's impact on two different groups: mainstream Americans and Indians in the show. Kasson uses the term "historical memory" to explain how societies structure and remember their pasts in a manner consistent with their visions for the future. According to Kasson, "historical memory" resulted from Americans and Europeans watching a "fictionalized" view of the frontier and accepting it as reality. As for Indian performers, they were caught in an entertainment that victimized them but provided subtle outlets for self-expression. . . .

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