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Book Review
Power and Place in the North American West. Ed. by Richard White and John M. Findlay. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. xx, 312 pp. Cloth, $35.00, ISBN 0-295-97774-4. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-295-97773-6.)
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This compendium of eleven essays originated in a Seattle conference in 1994. All are set in the "Far West": three in Oregon, two (mainly) in Washington State, two in California, one each in British Columbia, Idaho, and New Mexico, and one broadly regional. They range in time from the eighteenth century to the present. |
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As usual, it is hard to assess this collation as a congruent whole. The volume's title connects them tenuously; only the splendid essays by Paul W. Hirt and Joseph E. Taylor III on the enraging twentieth-century politics of timber and salmon exploitation speak to the same historical specifics. And, as the editors admit, few authors connect their work to overarching theory in any precise way. Three, however, offer especially rewarding stand-alone case studies: James F. Brooks on the intricate symbiosis between mutual raiding for slaves and livestock between Navahos and Latinos in New Mexico, 17801880; William Deverell and Douglas Flamming on the sophisticated differences in white and black boosterism in Los Angeles, 18801930; and Hal Rothman on the fascinating local politics of tourism in Sun Valley (with supplementary reference to Aspen), starting in 1935. These essays are models of grass-roots documentation. |
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