Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion

Elliott West's book "Continental Reckoning" is a 2024 Bancroft Prize in American History finalist, a 2024 Pulitzer Prize in History finalist, and a 2024 Spur Award winner. It is a sweeping narrative of the American West and its role in the transformation of the nation, from its vibrant Native cultures to its organization into states and territories. The book explores the West's extraordinary resources, such as gold in California, and argues that these changes should be given equal billing with the Civil War in this crucial transition of national life. West presents a fresh approach to the dawn of the American West, one of the most pivotal periods of American history.

Format: Hardback
Length: 704 pages
Publication date: 08 February 2023
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Renowned historian Elliott West presents a sweeping narrative of the American West and its vital role in the transformation of the nation in his book "Continental Reckoning." In the 1840s, the West, which would become the United States, was home to numerous vibrant Native cultures and vague claims by other nations. Thirty years later, it was organized into states and territories and bound into the nation and world by an infrastructure of rails, telegraph wires, and roads, as well as a racial and ethnic order, with its Indigenous peoples largely dispossessed and confined to reservations.

Unprecedented exploration uncovered the West's extraordinary resources, beginning with the discovery of gold in California within days of the United States acquiring the territory following the Mexican-American War. As those resources were developed, often by the most modern methods and through modern corporate enterprise, half of the contiguous United States was physically transformed.

"Continental Reckoning" guides the reader through the rippling, multiplying changes wrought in the western half of the country, arguing that these changes should be given equal billing with the Civil War in this crucial transition of national life. As the West was acquired, integrated into the nation, and made over physically and culturally, the United States shifted onto a course of accelerated economic growth, a racial reordering and redefinition of citizenship, engagement with global revolutions of science and technology, and invigorated involvement with the larger world.

Elliott West's "Continental Reckoning" is a groundbreaking work of history that sheds new light on the American West and its profound impact on the nation's development. It is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, and its insights will continue to shape our understanding of the past for years to come.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781496233585