by Lee Clark Mitchell
University of Chicago Press, 1996
Cloth: 978-0-226-53234-9 | Paper: 978-0-226-53235-6
Library of Congress Classification PS374.W4M55 1996
Dewey Decimal Classification 813.087409353

ABOUT THIS BOOK | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
A history of the Western in fiction and on film that shows how it reflects the changing obsessions and fears American culture

Ranging from the novels of James Fenimore Cooper to Louis L'Amour, and from classic films like Stagecoach to spaghetti Westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, Mitchell shows how Westerns helped assuage a series of crises in American culture. This landmark study shows that the Western owes its perennial appeal not to unchanging conventions but to the deftness with which it responds to the obsessions and fears of its audience. And no obsession, Lee Mitchell argues, has figured more prominently in the Western than what it means to be a man.