This book introduces the important concept of a female frontier--a frontier "every bit as real and coherent, as, for example, the mining frontier." It gives us a new understanding of western women's shared experiences and of the full implications of their participation in America's westward movement.

Riley has reconstructed women's roles and concerns from census data, legal proceedings, newspaper accounts, local histories, essays, sermons, novels, photographs, works of art, and in large part from their own words, as recorded in diaries, day books, journals, letters, memoirs, reminiscences, and interviews. These women include the barely literate and the educated, the young and the old, single and married, white and black, native-born and immigrant. What emerges is a new understanding of the shared experiences--at home, in paid employment, and in community activities--that constituted the female frontier.

"A major comparative frontier study. . . . New information on women's lives in the West."--Sandra L. Myres, author of "Westering Women and the Frontier Experience."

"Riley argues for the existence of a women's frontier, coexistent with, though quite different from, a men's frontier. This is an important book, well researched and clearly written."--"Nebraska History."

"What a wealth of information Riley has included in her book If you want to know about almost any subject concerning frontier women, this book will quickly summarize existing knowledge and, through extensive footnotes, tell you where to go for more."--"Minnesota History."

"This beautifully researched study is part of an important new trend in western historiography. In intriguing and revealing detail, Riley demonstrates that while pioneer men's lives were characterized by variety, women's were marked by sameness and consistency."--Elliott West, author of "The Saloon on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier."

"A vivid portrait of women's domestic, occupational, and civic activities . . . and a valuaable elaboration of important themes."--Gerald W. McFarland, author of "A Scattered People: An American Family Moves West."

"Riley's thesis is that it is neither plains nor prairie as such that structured the frontierswoman's life, but rather that the traditional female patterns of domesticity, motherhood, and social responsibilities followed her to her new western home, whether that be crude sod or town frame. . . . The reader learns in detail of everyday life for women of these areas. . . . This is a valuable contribution to the literature. . . . The notes alone would be worth the price of the book. . ."--"Colorado Libraries."

Generations of Americans have seen the West as beyond federal control and direction. But the national government's presence in the West dates to before Lewis and Clark, and since 1789 a number of U.S. presidents have had a penetrating and long-lasting impact on the region. In Presidents Who Shaped the American West, noted historians Glenda Riley and Richard W. Etulain present startling analyses of chief executives and their policies, illuminating the long reach of presidential power. The authors begin each chapter by sketching a particular president's biography and explaining the political context in which he operated while in office. They then consider overarching actions and policies that affected both the nation and the region during the president's administration, such as Thomas Jefferson's augmentation of the West via the Louisiana Purchase, and Andrew Jackson's removal of American Indians from the Southeast to ""Indian Country"" in the West. Abraham Lincoln's promotion of the Homestead Act, a transcontinental railroad, and western territories and states free of slavery marked further extensions of presidential power in the region. Theodore Roosevelt's conservation efforts and Jimmy Carter's expansion of earlier policies reflected growing public concern with the West's finite natural resources and fragile natural environment. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Dwight D. Eisenhower's highway program, and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society funneled federal funding into the West. In return for this largesse, some argued, the West paid the price of increased federal hegemony, and Ronald Reagan's presidency arguably curbed that power. Riley and Etulain also discuss the most recent presidential terms and the region's growing political power in Congress and the federal bureaucracy. With an accessible approach, Presidents Who Shaped the American West establishes the crucial and formative nature of the relationship between the White House and the West - and will encourage readers to continue examining this relationship.

With a widowed mother and six siblings, Annie Oakley first became a trapper, hunter, and sharpshooter simply to put food on the table. Yet her genius with the gun eventually led to her stardom in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The archetypal western woman, Annie Oakley urged women to take up shooting to procure food, protect themselves, and enjoy healthy exercise, yet she was also the proper Victorian lady, demurely dressed and skeptical about the value of women's suffrage. Glenda Riley presents the first interpretive biography of the complex woman who was Annie Oakley.

Legendary comrade and consort to train robbers, bootleggers, stagecoach robbers, bushwhackers, bank robbers, horse thieves, cattle thieves, and outlaws of all stripes, Belle Star (1848-89) was born in Missouri and emigrated with her family to Texas in 1863. Myth made her a dancehall entertainer, faro dealer, expert horsewoman, crack shot, and adopted member of the Cherokee Nation. Was her first love Cole Younger, a cousin and associate of Jesse James, and did she bear his child in 1869? And when she settled at Younger's Bend on the Canadian River in Indian Territory, did she really establish a haven for desperadoes, mastermind a string of criminal enterprises, and entertain a series of lovers, all of whom met with violent ends? Did the dime novelists invent her flamboyant dress, musical abilities, literary tastes, colorful language, and determined refusal to occupy "a woman's place"? Or was she an original free spirit whose force of personality and violation of all normal standards of conduct made her the perfect antiheroine of the Western frontier? Burton Rascoe's classic biography separates the facts from the folklore and traces the sources and afterlives of the fictional accounts published after her mysterious and unsolved murder. Glenda Riley's introduction adds new evidence to help get behind the layers of oral history, hyperbole, and outright lies. Burton Rascoe (1892-1957) worked as an editor and critic for numerous newspapers and magazines, including the Chicago Tribune, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and Newsweek, and was the author of nine books. Glenda Riley is Alexander M. Bracken Professor Emerita of History at Ball State University. She is the author of Women and Nature: Saving the "Wild" West (Nebraska 1999) and Taking Land, Breaking Land: Women Colonizing the American West and Kenya, 1840-1940.

Long before Rachel Carson's fight against pesticides placed female environmental activists in the national spotlight, women were involved in American environmentalism. In "Women and Nature: Saving the "Wild" West," Glenda Riley calls for a reappraisal of the roots of the American conservation movement. This thoroughly researched study of women conservationists provides a needed corrective to the male-dominated historiography of environmental studies. The early conservation movement gained much from women's widespread involvement. Florence Merriam Bailey classified the birds of New Mexico and encouraged appreciation of nature and concern for environmental problems. Ornithologist Margaret Morse Nice published widely on Oklahoma birds. In 1902 Mary Knight Britton established the Wild Flower Preservation Society of America. Women also stimulated economic endeavors related to environmental concerns, including nature writing and photography, health spas and resorts, and outdoor clothing and equipment. From botanists, birders, and nature writers to club-women and travelers, untold numbers of women have contributed to the groundswell of support for environmentalism.

In 1852 a record number of women helped keep the wagons rolling over the perilous western trails. The fourth volume of "Covered Wagon Women" is devoted to families headed for California that year. Diaries and letters of six pioneer women describe the rigors en route, trailside celebrations and tragedies, the scourge of cholera, and encounters with the Indians.

In two volumes, this third edition features expanded coverage of women in the military, women's healthcare, divorce, and women of colour, especially Spanish-speaking, American Indian, African American, and Asian-American. It also reviews important people, events and concepts.