![]() Since westward expansion coincided with the expansion of the print media, and since readers in the eastern United States had good reason to seek escape from the disturbing changes wrought by industrialization and urbanization, these exported cultural commodities found a receptive marketplace. ![]() Harvesting from the West an inestimable treasure of experiences and observations, these adventurers then refined this raw material into reminiscences, novels, diaries, letters, reports and tales of adventure, both actual and imagined. “Westward explosion” might be the better phrase.Īs these resource rushes multiplied, thousands of Americans plunged into a parallel - and, by many measures, more rewarding and more consequential - form of extractive industry. Rather than proceeding in a systematic march across a continent, a wild cast of characters - miners, farmers, ranchers, loggers - raced into the West, locating natural resources, extracting them and refining them into commodities to place on the market. Stretched past its capacity by the tumultuous migrations and movements of the 19th century, that orderly term “westward expansion” is ready for a break. ![]() PRAIRIE FIRES The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder By Caroline Fraser Illustrated. (This book was selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2017. ![]()
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