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Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Mark Kendall
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
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Bookshelf: The Great Word
The American West:
A New Interpretive History
By Robert V. Hine ’48
and John Mack Faragher
Yale University Press, 2001 • 616 pages
$55 hardcover; $26 paperback
The word “West” has enjoyed certain luster throughout America’s past. In
1895, Woodrow
Wilsoncalled it the “great word of our history.” The “‘great word’ was
never pure fact but
was always tinged deeply with myth,” Robert V. Hine’ 48 and John Mack
Faragher write in
their introduction to The American West: A New Interpretive History.
“Though interpretations
of the facts change, the myth survives. The history of the West has been
consistently
revised in accord with the dream.”
 I started Hine and Faragher’s book, I’ll admit, with only a partial
recollection of my high
school American history lessons. Like many students of my generation, I
knew to be
skeptical of the “old” history of westward expansion—the one that
praised American
pioneers as heroes and rugged individualists. The history I had learned
questioned these
views, citing the genocide of Native American tribes, clear-cutting of
the continent’s
great forests and exploitation of immigrant workers as proof of a
ruthless, land-grabbing
process. The name Fredrick Jackson Turner rang in my ears, though I
couldn’t place him on
a timeline. Most likely, his “Frontier Thesis”—the
late-19th-century essay that labeled the
American frontier “a meeting point between civilization and
savagery”—had been the topic of
some long-forgotten writing assignment.
But within pages of The American West, all these lessons came rushing
back to mind. Dates, facts and frontier stories filled my head. Each had
an odd familiarity, yet the context
was different. Hine and Faragher’s history moves beyond the
long-standing debate between
traditional and revisionist interpretations. On the one hand, the two
historians echo
Turner’s thesis, stating that all North America was once a frontier, a
West, for the many
people who came to inhabit it. On the other hand, they honor the wealth
of revisionist
histories written in the second half of the 20th century, which left
many Americans
wondering: “Who was the savage and who the civilized?” The result is a
history, as Stephen
Aron says in The Western Historical Quarterly, that recalls the
“forgotten history of
collusion” between people vying for survival and opportunity along an
ever-changing
frontier. In doing so, Hine and Faragher suggest different
directions—possibilities and
paradoxes—for a new generation of Western historians.
Throughout, The American West is filled with engaging stories. From
Texas ranches to
California mines, Hine and Faragher capture the idiosyncrasy of the
frontier. They
jettison the iconic, pelt-cap-wearing pioneer in favor of a much richer,
more nuanced cast
of characters. As a result, the history doubles as a pleasurable general
interest read. Dip
into its pages for a deft recounting of the Mormons’ journey to Utah or
Lewis and Clark’s
search for a transcontinental waterway. Not unanimously supportive or
critical of Western
expansion, The American West tells us how the “frontier is our common
past,” so that we
may understand better “our common future.”
—Noah Buhayar ’05
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