About the Author

Elliott West, Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, is the award-winning author of numerous articles and books, including Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far-Western Frontier; The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado; and The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story.

Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford University, is author of It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West and Remembering Ahanagran: Storytelling in a Family's Past.

Reviews

Calling this book a collection of essays makes as much sense as calling the Rocky Mountains a collection of rocks. On the contrary, The Essential West is a collection of riveting stories, original reflections, witty aphorisms, innovative perspectives, and insights that go straight to the heart - of the West and of the reader."" - Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West

""No one has written about western history with more insight, compassion, wisdom, and wit than Elliott West. Everything he writes is worth reading, and these essays are West at his best."" - Virginia Scharff co-author of Home Lands: How Women Made the West

""Elliott West is the best historian of the American West writing today."" - Richard White