The Mild, Mild West: On “Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West”
A one-volume history of the American West reads too much like a movie we’ve already seen.
Karl Jacoby is the Allan Nevins Professor of American History at Columbia University. His most recent book is The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire (W.W. Norton, 2016). (Photo courtesy of Deborah Lopez.)
A one-volume history of the American West reads too much like a movie we’ve already seen.