The American West has generated exceptional attention in the past few years, and new scholarship and interpretations have enriched and enlivened the study of its history. Each of the seventeen exciting and provocative essays chosen for this book illuminates an important topic in Western history. Three opening essays by the editors define the West as frontier and region, and place American frontiers in comparative context. Then follow essays that consider women's property rights in Spanish-Mexican California; the mountain men and national identity; Indians and bison on the Great Plains in the early nineteenth century; the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848; the Latter-day Saints from 1830 to 1890; the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 as a case of Indian-white conflict; cowboys as wage workers in the 1880s; homesteading and the homesteading ideal; miners and ethnic conflict in early-twentieth-century Arizona; the Great Depression in Idaho; how World War II changed Los Angeles; Japanese-American women in World War II; African Americans in the West; and the Pacific Northwest since 1945. The editors also provide a general introduction to the study of Western history and a time line of important events.

Little has been published about press organizations, and even less about women's press organizations. This book is the first to document the history of women's press organizations. In addition to rich historical accounts of some of these organizations, it also provides a picture of many of the women journalists involved in these press organizations, many of whom were leaders, both in journalism and in the social movements of their time. This book is a description and analysis of forty women's press organizations that have been key to the development of women writers of the press since the first established organization in 1881. Each entry describes the challenges faced by women that brought about the establishment of the organization at that particular time and place, some of the women who played key roles in the group's leadership, the group' s major activities and programs and its contributions to women of the press. The main purpose of these organizations was to provide women with a place where they could discuss professional issues and career strategies at a time when they were largely excluded from or marginalized by male-dominated media institutions. However, many also reflected the interests of some of the social and political reform movements associated with the women's movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, including the woman suffrage, peace, and ERA movements. Although some of the organizations described here no longer exist, new ones have taken on the challenge, in a profession where women still do not have equity.