Contents -- Preface -- The American Western -- Chapter 1: The American West in the 1890s - a Pivotal Decade -- Chapter 2: Founding Western History: Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Jackson Turner -- Theodore Roosevelt and The Winning of the West (1889-96) -- Frederick Jackson Turner and The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893) -- Roosevelt and Turner: a Question of Influence -- Chapter 3: Buffalo Bill's Wild West and the Codification of the Western -- Chapter 4: Western Literature from The Virginian to Shane -- The Virginian (1902) -- The Western Novel in the Wake of The Virginian -- Shane (1949) -- Chapter 5: Western Film from Silent to Noir -- Bronco Bill Anderson and William S. Hart -- The Rise of Cinema -- The Silent Western Epics -- The Western in the 1930s and 1940s -- Western Noir -- Chapter 6: The Western and the Cold War: the Gunfighter, Heroic Leadership and Political Culture -- Interpretations of Time -- The Gunfighter (1950) -- Jimmy Ringo to Will Kane -- The Tin Star by John M. Cunningham -- High Noon (1952): The Eisenhower Western -- Eisenhower as Kane -- The United States as Hadleyville -- Shane (1953): the Kennedy Western -- John F. Kennedy as Shane -- The Presidency in 1960 -- Kennedy or Nixon: Does it Make Any Difference? (1960) -- The Nixon-Kennedy Debates -- Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1964) -- Chapter 7: New Western Perspectives: History and Literature -- The New Western History -- New Western Perspectives and Western Literature -- Chapter 8: The Western and Political Culture, 1960-1992: Revisions of Shane -- Why Does Shane Come Back? -- Leone, Eastwood and the Spaghetti Western -- Cinecitta Studios: Hollywood comes to Rome -- High Plains Drifter (1973) -- Pale Rider (1985) -- Unforgiven (1992) -- Chapter 9: Wanted Dead or Alive: 9/11 and the American Western -- Post-9/11 Westerns -- Bibliography.

Web References -- Index.