David M. Wrobel, "America's West: A History, 1890-1950" (Cambridge UP, 2017)

In America's West: A History, 1890-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), David M. Wrobel describes a sixty year period of remarkable change for the vast region. By focusing on politics, demography, race, and cultural change, Wrobel argues that while the West was colonized space, it was also a crucible for the broader changes in American society during the first half of the twentieth century. America’s West is a concise synthesis of a period often neglected by historians of the West, as the United States emerged as an international imperial power. Wrobel focuses on several important actors, including Theodore Roosevelt, and also connect the history of politicians and leaders to everyday Americans, immigrants, and Native people. America’s West is evidence that the American West is still a unique region worthy of its rich legacy of scholarship.

Dr. David Wrobel holds the Merrick Chair in Western American History and is the David L. Boren Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma, where he also serves as the Dean of Arts and Sciences. He is an award winning historian of the West and will begin a tenure as president of the Western History Association in 2019.

Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana.