Examines the ways in which the frontier myth influences American culture and politics, drawing on fiction, western films, and political writing

National Book Award Finalist: A study of national myths, lore, and identity that “will interest all those concerned with American cultural history” (American Political Science Review). Winner of the American Historical Association’s Albert J. Beveridge Award for Best Book in American History In Regeneration Through Violence, the first of his trilogy on the mythology of the American West, historian and cultural critic Richard Slotkin demonstrates how the attitudes and traditions that shape American culture evolved from the social and psychological anxieties of European settlers struggling in a strange new world to claim the land and displace Native Americans. Using the popular literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries—including captivity narratives, the Daniel Boone tales, and the writings of Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Melville—Slotkin traces the full development of this myth. “Deserves the careful attention of everyone concerned with the history of American culture or literature. ”—Comparative Literature “Slotkin’s large aim is to understand what kind of national myths emerged from the American frontier experience. . . . [He] discusses at length the newcomers’ search for an understanding of their first years in the New World [and] emphasizes the myths that arose from the experiences of whites with Indians and with the land.” —Western American Literature

Discusses the subjugation of Native Americans on the American frontier, and explains how it was used to justify American territorial expansion.

A stunning work of historical imagination, Abe immerses the reader in the past Abraham Lincoln kept hidden: the isolating poverty and frontier violence that shaped his character. Marked by the death of his beloved mother and the struggle to keep reading and learning in the face of his father's fierce disapproval, Abe perseveres, growing into the man who changed the course of American history. Abe comes of age in the course of a dramatic flatboat journey down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Along the way, Abe and his companions encounter slavery firsthand and experience the violence -- and the pleasures -- of rough river towns, plantations, and the cities of Natchez and New Orleans. Numerous historical figures make appearances alongside the colorful characters of the Mississippi: preachers and vigilantes, planters and thieves, prostitutes and lady reformers. Transformed by what he has seen and done, Abe returns to make his final break with his father and to step out of the wilderness into New Salem -- and history. Richard Slotkin's Abe draws deeply on historical scholarship, but it is not biography. Instead, it is a vivid, persuasive re-creation of the life young Lincoln might have lived, and of the people, scenes, and influences that helped produce the character and conscience of the man often called the greatest of all Americans.

The Western genre has long been associated with right-wing and libertarian politics, and is said to promote individualism and free-market economics. In a new look at the Western, however, Ryan McMaken shows that the Western is in fact often anti-capitalist, and in many ways, the genre attacks the dominant ideology of nineteenth-century America: classical liberalism. The classical Westerns of the mid-twentieth century often feature wealthy capitalist villains who oppress the cowardly and defenseless shopkeepers and farmers of the frontier. The gunfighter, a representative of the law and order provided by the nation-state, intervenes to provide safety and justice. In addition to attacks on capitalism, the Western attacks other prized values of the bourgeois middle classes including Christianity, education and urbanization. McMaken examines these themes as used in the films of John Ford, Anthony Mann, and Howard Hawks. These pioneers of the classical Westerns are then contrasted with later innovators such as Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, and Clint Eastwood. Also included are discussions of the role of the LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE series, Victorian literature, and the nature of crime on the historical frontier. With a foreword by Paul A. Cantor, author of GILLIGAN UNBOUND and THE INVISIBLE HAND IN POPULAR CULTURE.

How do political conflicts shape popular culture? This book explores that question by analyzing how the Planet of the Apes films functioned both as entertaining adventures and as apocalyptic political commentary. Informative and thought provoking, the book demonstrates how this enormously popular series of secular myths used images of racial and ecological crisis to respond to events like the Cold War, the race riots of the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement, the Black Power movement, and the Vietnam War. The work utilizes interviews with key filmmakers and close readings of the five Apes films and two television series to trace the development of the series' theme of racial conflict in the context of the shifting ideologies of race during the sixties and seventies. The book also observes that today, amid growing concerns over race relations, the resurgent popularity of Apes and Twentieth Century--Fox's upcoming film may again make Planet of the Apes a pop culture phenomenon that asks who we are and where we are going. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

In Pulpit and Nation, Spencer McBride highlights the importance of Protestant clergymen in early American political culture, elucidating the actual role of religion in the founding era. Beginning with colonial precedents for clerical involvement in politics and concluding with false rumors of Thomas Jefferson’s conversion to Christianity in 1817, this book reveals the ways in which the clergy’s political activism—and early Americans’ general use of religious language and symbols in their political discourse—expanded and evolved to become an integral piece in the invention of an American national identity. Offering a fresh examination of some of the key junctures in the development of the American political system—the Revolution, the ratification debates of 1787–88, and the formation of political parties in the 1790s—McBride shows how religious arguments, sentiments, and motivations were subtly interwoven with political ones in the creation of the early American republic. Ultimately, Pulpit and Nation reveals that while religious expression was common in the political culture of the Revolutionary era, it was as much the calculated design of ambitious men seeking power as it was the natural outgrowth of a devoutly religious people.

"If you prefer history served in a dozen fresh ways, get this book." --Chicago Tribune

When a Kryptonian rocket crash-landed in 1930s Czechoslovakia, the Nazi war machine discovered the most powerful weapon on the planet: baby Kal-El. More than 50 years later, a new resistance has arisen... the Freedom Fighters! To crush Hitler's regime, the Human Bomb, Phantom Lady, Black Condor, and Doll Woman launch a guerrilla campaign to reignite the American spirit in the hope of bringing Uncle Sam back from the dead! Collects Freedom Fighters #1-12.