| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 35.3

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 35.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Western Places, American Myths: How We Think about the West. Edited by Gary J. Hausladen. (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2003. xiv + 343 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, index. $49.95.)

The latest version of the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines the word "geography" as having its origins in the Greek phrase "to describe the earth's surface." Gary J. Hausladen has assembled a dozen authors (including himself) to speak to the ways that his discipline (geography) contributes to the enduring debate about the meaning of the American West. Showing little fear that the scientific character of his field might suffer in the realm of the humanities, Hausladen identified the West as "not just a real geographic region" (p. 1). Instead, he asked the writers to explain what they knew about the larger historiographical debates of the West as fantasy or reality, the West as process or place, and the West as exceptional or irrelevant to the American identity.

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