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Narratives of the American West: Literature and History brings together Richard W. Etulain’s most resonant work—along with newly written essays—to reveal how history and storytelling have continually shaped each other in the making of the West. Part historiographical memoir, part wide‑ranging critical survey, the collection moves from Etulain’s Basque upbringing in eastern Washington to his lifetime of teaching, editing, and writing, showing how personal experience and intellectual inquiry converge on the page.

In the tradition of Elliott West’s The Essential West, Etulain maps the field’s major interpretive turns, from Frederick Jackson Turner to Earl Pomeroy to West’s“Greater Reconstruction,” and demonstrates how literary craft and historical method inform each other. Along the way, he demythologizes the stories of iconic figures, such as Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane, Chief Joseph, and Sacagawea, tracing how cultural memory evolves across novels, films, and archives.

Featuring new essays on Wallace Stegner and Elliott West, alongside revised classics on western myths, genres, regions, and peoples, this accessible yet rigorous volume invites readers to embrace narratives that are complex and morally engaged. Essential for scholars, students, and curious general readers alike, Narratives of the American West is a compelling guide to how the West has been written and remembered—and why those stories still matter.

A critical look at the competing motivations behind one of modern architecture’s most widely known and misunderstood movements

 

Although “mid-century modern” has evolved into a highly popular and ubiquitous architectural style, this term obscures the varied perspectives and approaches of its original practitioners. In Nothing Permanent, Todd Cronan displaces generalizations with a nuanced intellectual history of architectural innovation in California between 1920 and 1970, uncovering the conflicting intentions that would go on to reshape the future of American domestic life.

Focusing on four primary figures—R. M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, and Charles and Ray Eames—Nothing Permanent demonstrates how this prolific era of modern architecture in California, rather than constituting a homogenous movement, was propelled by disparate approaches and aims. Exemplified by the twin pillars of Schindler and Neutra and their respective ideological factions, these two groups of architects represent opposing poles of architectural intentionality, embodying divergent views about the dynamic between interior and exterior, the idea of permanence, and the extent to which architects could exercise control over the inhabitants of their structures.

Looking past California modernism’s surface-level idealization in present-day style guides, home decor publications, films, and television shows, Nothing Permanent details the intellectual, aesthetic, and practical debates that lie at the roots of this complex architectural moment. Extracting this period from its diffusion into visual culture, Cronan argues that mid-century architecture in California raised questions about the meaning of architecture and design that remain urgent today.