American Frontiers - by Gregory H Nobles (Paperback)

About the Book

Now available in a paperback edition, AMERICAN FRONTIERS is a perceptive account of this country's geopolitical developments and diverse frontier cultures. With clarity and intellectual vigor, Gregory H. Nobles shows us not only the culture and social composition of the West but also the centuries of expansion and conquest all over the continent that created our nation as we know it today.

Book Synopsis

Gregory Nobles shows how American leaders, beginning with Washington and Jefferson, pursued a policy of national expansion and development that enabled the United States to become the dominant power on the North American continent. Within this broad framework, he explores the settlers' diverse and complex interactions with Indians as enemies, allies, and trading partners. The result is a sensitive, perceptive account of the patterns of contact and conquest on America's frontiers over the course of four centuries.

Review Quotes

"Clear and persuasive . . . [presented] with clarity and calm . . . Readers . . . will find many thought-provoking mysteries hidden just below the surface of the text." --Patricia Nelson Limerick, The New York Times Book Review

"Balanced, beautifully written, and provocative . . . A very valuable contribution to the evolving conception of American continental growth." --Jay Freeman, Booklist

"While Nobles is properly critical of [Frederick Jackson] Turner's frontier thesis (which has many grievous faults), his book also pays tribute to the enduring validity of Turner's great theme. {He] writes graceful, even elegant prose." --MA., The Wilson Quarterly

"Gregory Nobles makes a powerfully persuasive case for the continuing importance of frontier history to anyone who wishes to understand the complex cultural encounters among diverse peoples that have shaped the American past. Readers wishing a guide to the latest scholarship on this subject need look no further than this elegant and masterful synthesis." --William Cronon, author of Nature's Metropolis

About the Author

Gregory H. Nobles is the author of Divisions Throughout the Whole: Politics and Society in Hampshire County, Massachusetts 1740-1775 and American Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest, and co-author of Evolution and Revolution: American Society 1600-1820. His articles have appeared in journals such as the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of Social History, and the Journal of American History. He has held numerous research grants, including three from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has been a Fellow at the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University and at the American Antiquarian Society, where he was elected to membership in 1995. He has also been a Fulbright Senior Scholar in New Zealand (1995), and in 2002 he will hold a Fulbright Distinguished Professorship in the Netherlands, the John Adams Chair in American History at the University of Amsterdam.