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New Westers

The West in Contemporary American Culture

Michael L. Johnson

408 pages, 40 photographs, 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-0763-1, $29.95

Book Cover Image"Yeeeeehaaah!" Nightly that raucous cry breezes out from beneath the broad-brimmed Stetsons of boot-scootin line dancers at boisterous bars called Cadillac Ranch, Cactus Moon, or Stallions & Stars. And that, Michael Johnson tells us, is just one of the many signs that Americans have rekindled--and refashioned--their love affair with the American West.

These "New Westers," Johnson reveals, line-dance and two-step, listen to Garth Brooks and George Strait, drink beer from long-neck bottles, wear clothes ordered from Sheplers, watch rodeo on ESPN, play Wild West arcade games, eat fajitas and tacos in stucco-style Mexican cafes, collect Western art and Native American crafts, and vacation in and move to the West.

"New Westers" rewrite the history and biography of the West. They reimagine the West in cowboy sagas and poetry, Native American novels, Mexican-American drama, nature writing, revisionist films, eclectic visual artwork, and neo-traditional music. They flock to movies like Thelma and Louise, Unforgiven, and Dances with Wolves or mini-series like Lonesome Dove and read bestsellers like The Crossing and All the Pretty Horses.

"New Westers" are men and women who may or may not have ever hitched up a horse but who want a "personal" West. At the end of an urbanized century adrift in confusing change, they seek a more natural home, a fuller and wider sense of place, and a deeper and more colorful personal identity. They also want, Johnson shows, to revive the dream of the mythic West-but on new and different terms. They overrun the Old West and yet strive to preserve it, raising troubling new concerns about the differences between the mythic and the real, between traditional and contemporary cultural influences.

Infused with true grit and true affection, Johnson's immensely entertaining book takes us on a lively jaunt through a colorful and amazing landscape. His celebration of things Western will be treasured by all armchair cowpokes or anyone who's ever dreamed of riding the high country.

"Break out your favorite cowboy/girl outfit, settle back, and enjoy a delightful ride with the New Westers. Johnson runs the gamut of current Western culture--from poets, novelists, and historians to singers, dancers, and rodeo riders. Whatever you like about the New West, Johnson has something refreshing to say about it!"--Richard W. Slatta, author of Cowboys of the Americas and The Cowboy Encyclopedia

"Illuminating, very well written and easy to read."--Tony Hillerman

"A lively, entertaining, and well-written survey of the role of the West in recent American culture that will appeal to all readers."--Richard W. Etulain, coauthor of The American West and editor of Writing Western History

"New Westers brings it all together--movies and fashion, historians and architects, chili-eating and two-stepping. A readable roundup of all of the manifestations of America's most recent flirtation with the West of the imagination."--Elliott West, author of The Way to the West

MICHAEL L. JOHNSON, professor of English at the University of Kansas, is the author of numerous books on subjects that stretch from New Journalism to artificial intelligence, including Violence and Grace: Poems about the American West.