| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.5

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 247 words from this article are provided below; about 599 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, 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. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• 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 American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
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 American Historical Review, 110.5 | The History Cooperative

Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill. The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier. (Stanford Economics and Finance.) Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2004. Pp. xii, 263. $24.95.
This book by Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill offers an engaging and succinct look at how property rights developed in the American West during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The authors take on the myth that the American West was a place marked by lawlessness and violence and replace it with images of cooperating individuals who worked with one another to create agreements, contracts, and institutions that protected property rights, which led to the increased value of property in the West.	1
Anderson and Hill take a sweeping look at some of the most iconic moments in the history of the American West. For example, they examine the systematic dispossession of Native peoples from their homelands, the creation of mining legal regimes in California, the emergence of rules for governing the open range, and the development of prior appropriation for allocating water rights. These scholars ask if the settling of the West was really as violent and fraught as historians and Deadwood have led us to believe. Their answer is a decisive "no," and through some in-depth research in both primary and secondary sources, the authors make a compelling case for historians to use economic analysis in reexamining these important moments.	. . .

There are about 599 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.