The Great Plains, Second Edition

One of the most influential and widely known works in western history, "The Great Plains Environment" by Walter Prescott Webb, argues that the revolver, barbed wire, and windmill were technological adaptations that facilitated Anglo conquest of the arid, treeless region. This new edition features an introduction by Great Plains historian Andrew R. Graybill and a new index and updated design.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 632 pages
Publication date: 01 August 2022
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Published in collaboration with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University, this renowned depiction of the encounter between the expansive central plains of the continent and the white Americans who migrated there in the mid-nineteenth century has endured as one of the most influential, widely recognized, and contentious works in western history since its initial publication in 1931. Arguing that "the Great Plains environment... constitutes a geographic unity whose influences have been so powerful as to put a characteristic mark upon everything that survives within its borders," Walter Prescott Webb identifies the revolver, barbed wire, and windmill as technological adaptations that facilitated the Anglo conquest of the arid, treeless region. Webb draws on a diverse range of historical, anthropological, geographical, demographic, climatological, and economic sources to argue that the 98th Meridian constitutes an institutional fault line at which "practically every institution that was carried across it was either broken and remade or else greatly altered."

This revised edition of one of the foundational works of western American history includes an introduction by Great Plains historian Andrew R. Graybill and a new index and updated design.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781496231338
Edition number: 2 ed