Book & podcast collection

The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier

byMegan Kate Nelson

Megan Kate Nelson retells the history of the American West through a diverse cast of people who sought land, safety, power, freedom, or belonging there. Indigenous nations, settlers, migrants, soldiers, workers, women, and families appear not as supporting figures in a simple frontier epic but as makers of competing worlds. Nelson traces conquest, displacement, environmental change, violence, survival, and community while examining how later stories turned conflict into national mythology. The book reveals the West as both a real region and a persistent argument about who counts as American.

Publisher

Scribner

Publication date

2026-03-31

Format

Hardcover

Pages

464

ISBN

9781668004340