Customer Reviews:
 How the West was ... Lost April 25, 2007
1001 Pages (Germany)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am not American. Yet I grew up with Western movies and TV series like Bonanza or Our Little Farm; Fort Laramie was to me a more familiar name than the name of the village next to ours. When I was an adult, I started to think about all the clichés and myths about the West that crammed my head since I was a little child and played "Indian and Cowboy" in the fields behind our home. Slowly I came to realise that the real history of the Conquest was different, and certainly less romantic; I got interested in that subject, read a lot about it for many years and eventually visited the US. If you feel, that it is the time for you to know the real story (and how the myths we all know were fabricated around it by white novelists, journalists and movie men), then this is the book you have to start with. Limerick convincingly demonstrates, if demonstration is needed, how open violence and injustice were buried under a heap of justification and embellishment myths. She also shows how the strive for conquest and economical exploitation and the accompanying sense of superior righteousness is deeply rooted in the US American worldview up to the present day, being at the core of the Legacy of Conquest. It has shaped US policy since almost two centuries and continues to do so. After all, the 7th Cavalry Regiment (whose namesakes were routed at Little Bighorn) is stationed in Iraq today. This is the unbroken past, put in a nutshell. But there is more to it, and Limerick will tell you how the myths about the conquest of the West were developed, and why. In reality, the West was lost, not won, in the Conquest, and many of the painful details of that process as well as their later covering up in the mass media and film industry are reviewed in Limerick's book. A superb and forcefully argued book, highly recommended.
Legacy a groundbreaking work June 3, 2003
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Limerick's book, contrary to one reviewer's claim, was not the conventional view at the time the book was published. If it seems conventional now, it is because Limerick has reshaped the field of Western studies with her rethinking of Turner's frontier thesis. The book is an excellent resource for history classes as well as literature classes, as it presents the "West" in a way very different from the West of the myth and movies. It is also very readable, which is not a claim I can make for many history books. Limerick in person is an engaging, charismatic, sharply funny speaker, and this carries over into her writing.
Go west young man! But take this with you. March 4, 2000
abigail.thomas@sjc.ox.ac.uk (Oxford, England)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If any book can give you a real understanding of the influence of the West, both real and metaphorical, on American politics and culture, this is it. Patricia Nelson Limerick has made this topic her own, and her writing is elegant, informative and witty.
Of some interest, perhaps July 20, 1999
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Patricia Nelson Limerick is no risk-taker, and her portrayal of the cruelty and exploitation in the West of the U.S. is conventional. However, this is not as bad as some. For a more transgressive and genuinely radical perspective, don't bother with this one.
A terrific read April 20, 1999
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Limerick's work here is outstanding. Here ability to tie in the violence of the western expansion to our current myths and current behavior is terrific. Moreover, in addition to be an eye-opening and informative work, it is an enjoyable read as well. A must have for anyone who has an interest in Western history, or who simply wants to learn more about US history.
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