The Golden West

Alicia Christensen is the Bison Books editor at the University of Nebraska Press and the editor of American Lives: A Reader (available in a Bison Books edition). David Wrobel is a professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the author of Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West. Excerpts include works by: Bess Streeter Aldrich, the descendants of Nicholas Black Elk, Willa Cather, William Clark, Ella Cara Deloria, Kenneth L. Holmes, David Lavender, Meriwether Lewis, Ralph Moody, Wright Morris, John G. Neihardt, Tillie Olsen, Louise Pound, Mari Sandoz, Jack Schaefer, Luther Standing Bear, Wallace Stegner, Elinore Pruitt Stewart, and Mildred Walker.

Preface: A Celebration of Bison Books Introduction: The West and America: The National Significance of Regional Writing David Wrobel O Pioneers! Willa Cather Plains Song: For Female Voices Wright Morris Waterlily Ella Cara Deloria My People the Sioux Luther Standing Bear Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers Ralph Moody Shane Jack Schaefer One Man's West David Lavender Black Elk Lives: Conversations with the Black Elk Family Esther Black Elk DeSersa, Olivia Black Elk Pourier, Aaron DeSersa Jr., and Clifton DeSersa A Cycle of the West: The Song of the Indian Wars John G. Neihardt Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas Mari Sandoz Nebraska Folklore Louise Pound A Lantern in Her Hand Bess Streeter Aldrich Winter Wheat Mildred Walker Yonnondio: From the Thirties Tillie Olsen Letters of a Woman Homesteader Elinore Pruitt Stewart Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails Kenneth L. Holmes The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery Meriwether Lewis and William Clark The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail Wallace Stegner Source Acknowledgments Contributors Discussion Questions

"The Golden West contains wonderful selections, provocatively arranged. Reading, I felt the pleasure of encountering old friends but also a stab of envy for the young readers who will travel these realms of gold for the first time." - Mary Clearman Blew, author of Jackalope Dreams, winner of the Western Heritage Center's prize for fiction "In this fine collection, the American West is defined by war, optimism, adventure, despair, discovery, innovation, hopelessness, and prosperity. This is the American West as it really was---sometimes rough and wild, other times serene and domesticated---told through the beautiful language of authors who wrote what they lived, and whose lives were shaped, as all our lives are, by the place they called home." - Ted Kooser, former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author