(1)

Date: Thurs, 7 Sept 1995
From: Caron Schwartz Ellis

The place to start is with recent MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant winner Patricia Limerick's The Legacy of Conquest, New York: Norton, 1987. She is probably the best known of the New West historians. Also check out a book she co-edited with Clyde Milner and Charles Rankin, Trails: Toward a New Western History, University of Kansas, 1987.

(2)

Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995
From: virginia joy scharff (vscharff@unm.edu)

Although there are all kinds of books and articles that fit in with the New Western History, I'd argue that one work stands out as "seminal", a word that in this instance as always demands interrogation. The book is of course Patricia Nelson Limerick's Legacy of Conquest.

Virginia Scharff
University of New Mexico
(vscharff@unm.edu)

(3)

Date: Wed, 06 Sep 1995
From: Gretchen Adams-Bond (GABOND@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU)

This isn't generally my specific field, but I would think that the following would have to be listed:

Patricia N. Limerick: Legacy of Conquest
Richard White: It's Your Misfortune and None of my Own
Richard White: The Roots of dependency: subsistence, environment and social change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos

Other personal favorites are:

Quintard Taylor: The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era
Mike Davis: City of Quartz

Gretchen Adams-Bond
University of Oregon
(GABOND@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU)

(4)

Date: Thu, 7 Sep 1995
From: JO ANN REECE (JREECE@GSLAN.OFFSYS.UOKNOR.EDU)

Dear Ron Helfrich:

I think scholars and reviewers will agree that It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West, by Richard White (1991), is a "seminal" work in the new Western History.

We have this book available in paperback at $21.95. Feel free to contact me for additional information, or if you wish to request an examination copy of the book.

Sincerely,
Jo Ann Reece
Direct Mail and Textbook Manager
University of Oklahoma Press
1005 Asp Ave., Norman, OK 73019
Phone: (405) 325-5111
FAX: (405) 325-4000
(jreece@uoknor.edu)

(5)

Date: Thu, 07 Sep 1995
From: Jeffrey Ostler (JOSTLER@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU)

Mr. Helfrich,

I don't know what other ideas will get for "seminal" works in western history, but you may be interested to know that a book many of my graduate students think is perhaps the most provocative work about western history in the past ten or more years is by someone who doesn't have a Ph.D. in any field at all, let alone formal training in western American history. The book is Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Ecavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990).

Jeff Ostler
Dept. of History
University of Oregon
(jostler@oregon.uoregon.edu)