Bethany Maile, "Anything Will Be Easy After This: A Western Identity Crisis" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)

New Books in Literature · Dec 30, 2020 · 43m

There is something quintessentially American about the idea of the west. Though the time of western expansion has long since passed, stories about cowboys on horses and pioneers panning for gold resonate with us to this day, living on in our books, our movies, and our in cultural imaginations. Through these stories, the west has come to represent values like stoicism, self-reliance, and rugged individualism. For many who call it home, the west also represents a heritage, a tradition, and a way of life. But how many of these collective conceptions of the west are actually true? In her stunning…