Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. "Code of the West": Politics, Religion, and Popular Culture -- Part One. Cowboy Politics: Roosevelt through Reagan -- 1. To Die in the West: The O.K. Corral, History versus Film -- 2. Sheriff of Cochise: Thirty Seconds to Eternity -- 3. Red, White, and Blue States: Political Philosophy in Nineteenth-Century America -- 4. "From My Cold, Dead Hands": Gun Control in the West and Westerns -- 5. Way of the Gun: Violence in American Life -- 6. It's a Man's World? Gender Politics on Hollywood's Frontier -- 7. Go West, Young (Business)Man: American Dreamers, Political Schemers -- 8. Redistributing the Wealth: Gene Autry, Frank Capra, and the New Deal Western -- 9. Don't Fence Me In: Rugged Individualism and Open Range -- 10. Silent Springs, Vanishing Prairies: Environmentalism and the Western -- 11. Red States, Red Menace: Of Cowboys and Communism -- 12. Once upon a Time in a Revolution: Radical Politics and the Western Film -- 13. Viva Juárez! Viva Villa! Viva Zapata! The Biographical Western as Political Allegory -- 14. All the Right Stuff: The World According to John Wayne -- 15. Flag-Waving on the Wild Frontier: Stars and Stripes as Political Ideology -- Part Two. God's Country: Religion in the Western Film -- 16. Odes to American Imperialism: Manifest Destiny in Western Movies -- 17. The Town and the City: Space as Theme, Place as Character -- 18. Glory in the (Wild)Flower: Romanticism on the Open Range -- 19. Hearts of Darkness, Souls of Light: Visions of Nature in American Film and Fiction -- 20. A Chapel in the Canyon: Religiosity, American-Style -- 21. Multiculturalism, Mormonism, and Movies: Hollywood's History and Cultural Appropriation -- 22. End of the Trail: The Dark Side of Faith -- 23. Ride Out for Vengeance: Revising a Western Paradigm.

24. Old Testament and New: Days of Wrath, Angels of Mercy -- 25. The Church and the Saloon: Catholic versus Protestant Westerns -- 26. Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Pistol and the Pulpit -- 27. Harts of the West: The Gospel According to Clint -- 28. Then Came Sam! From Pappy to Peckinpah -- 29. Count No Man Lucky until His Death: The Western as American Tragedy -- 30. Born Again: Of Cowboys, Christianity, and Conversion -- Conclusion. No Country for Bold Men: The Western Film in the Twenty-First Century -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index of Films and Shows -- General Index.