Description: Wrobel illustrates how the perceived demise of the frontier brought about a longing for wilderness and the pioneer spirit. He also emphasizes how it influenced debate on public land and immigration policy, expansionism, and the merits of individualistic and cooperative political systems. He relates how it affected and was affected by such diverse social and political issues such as racism, industrialization, irrigation, tenant farming, class struggle, government intervention, and the naturalist movement.
Review Quotes:
"I do not know of anyone who has brought together so much material on the popular foreboding over the frontier's demise. Wrobel uses articles and commentaries from periodicals in the 1870s and 1880s to show both an awareness of the frontier's significance to a distinctive national character and an uneasiness that this molding influence was about to end. Unlike a lot of writing in intellectual history, his style is accessible to the general reader as well as the specialist."--Elliott West, author of Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far-Western Frontier.
"A lucid and rewarding synthesis of cultural and western history."--Richard W. Etulain, author of Writing Western History
"A superb and original analysis, rich in interdisciplinary detail."--Wilbur R. Jacobs, author of On Turner's Trail