This hugely influential work marked a turning point in US history and culture, arguing that the nation’s expansion into the Great West was directly linked to

William Gilmore Simms (1807-1870), the antebellum South's foremost author and cultural critic, was the first advocate of regionalism in the creation of national

American writings often express a hunger for a mythologized frontier at the edge of known civilization, where one's identity, choices, and decisions are not lim

Contents: Preface; Introduction; Chapter 1: Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper; Chapter 2: Nathaniel Hawthorne; Sketches of Western Adventure; The S