| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 224 words from this article are provided below; about 403 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, 90.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West. By Virginia Scharff. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. xii, 239 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-520-21212-6. Paper, $19.95,ISBN 0-520-23777-3.)
Readers of a certain age and musical predilection will effortlessly complete the song lyric from which the title of Virginia Scharff's new book is drawn: "Twenty thousand roads I've been down, down, down, and they all led me straight back home to you." This sprightly collection of essays does, indeed, meander along a number of pleasurable byways, but no single destination ever comes into sight.	1
Twenty Thousand Roads contains six historical essays, largely biographical in focus, and a concluding personal reflection. In her introduction Scharff locates her work at the intersection of two realms of scholarship that she implies have been largely distinct, the history of women in America and the history of the American West: I see women moving into and away from, through and around, the shifting ground of the American West.... If we try to see the great events of our history through the eyes of women in motion and action, these events, and the places they happened, look different. (p. 4) While the individual essays are interesting and well written, neither the American West nor the nature of women's lives looks significantly different as a result.	. . .

There are about 403 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.