Back when I studied Western history, it was exciting. We could thrill to the challenges of heroic men and women (yes, we knew there were women, too, even if we didn't talk about them much) as they confronted the elements and tamed the West. Sure, we knew myth and fact blended at times, but overall it still seemed to be a unique time, ours alone, filled with significant events achieved by people of stature.

Alas, we had it all wrong. They weren't explorers but exploiters. The West wasn't discovered, it was captured; it wasn't tamed, it was beaten into submission.In the politically correct '90s, our history must be, too. Enter the "Oxford History of the American West."

Billed as "progressive" and "boldly written," it claims to have "undertaken the important task of replacing the easy assumptions of the American West as a touristy, mass media glitter-dome surrounded by enormous amounts of land, whose primary occupants are heroic male archetypes noted for violent actions." (I don't know exactly whose assumptions those are, however; even I didn't think quite like that.)

It is an ambitious project, thoughtfully conceived and carefully executed. Project editors are Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O'Connor (both history professors at Utah State University) and Martha A. Sandweiss (associate professor of American Studies at Amherst College). And 25 contributing authors add their perspectives and insights.

Organized topically, rather than strictly chronologically, the text is divided into four sections: Heritage, Expansion, Transition and Interpretation, which does set the stage for a different way of looking at the West.

The big question, however, is what exactly is the West? A geographic region? That would allow the inclusion of Hawai'i (the insistence of spelling it Hawai'i all the way through seems a bit pretentious) even though Hawaiian history is not typically thought of as Western history. A frontier mentality? That would allow the inclusion of Colonial America and the earliest confrontations with American Indians even though they took place in the East.

In the end, each author uses his or her own definition, some taking a very narrow view (Brian W. Dippie on "The Visual West," for example) and others a broad approach (Jay Gitlin's "Empires of Trade, Hinterlands of Settlement.")

A look at some of the chapter titles shows the scope of the work: "Native Peoples and Native Histories," "Animals and Enterprise," "Religion and Spirituality," "Wage Earners and Wealth Makers," "Landscapes of Abundance and Scarcity," "Contemporary People/Congested Places," "Selling the Popular Myth."

The approach is interesting, but the overall tone is rather patronizing and harsh. Anglo-Americans, as they are called, seemed to have done little right in settling the West and not much better since.

Nor was it all that unique - everyone from Canada to Brazil has had "western" experiences.

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And forget the battles of good and evil that have been taken out of the West and plastered on the silver screen. Cowboys and outlaws were merely part of the Western Civil War of Incorporation.

In the end, it is ironic that what the book does best is prove the thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner, much maligned throughout for his naive and simplistic approach to the frontier, that each age rewrites history according to the moods and needs of its times.

And I suppose we need to look at the world in this way in the uptight '90s, when no one can get along with anyone. Maybe if we find more common ground in our past, it will help. Ten years from now, we may look back on this as a milestone study of our Western experience - moving us away from what Charles Peterson calls the period of "congratulation, escapism and development" to one of "cultural and ecological responsibility."

It's too bad that the book is so caught up in its sense of mission and a feeling of self-importance that it squeezes a lot of the life out of the story it is telling. Not only is it somewhat snooty, it is ever so slightly dull - good textbook reading, but not quite what you want for a lazy Sunday afternoon.

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