Gunfighter Nation completes Richard Slotkinβs trilogy, begun in Regeneration Through Violence and continued in Fatal Environment, on the myth of the American frontier.
Slotkin examines an impressive array of sources - fiction, Hollywood westerns, and the writings of Hollywood figures and Washington leaders - to show how the racialist theory of Anglo-Saxon ascendance and superiority (embodied in Theodore Rooseveltβs The Winning of the West), rather than Frederick Jackson Turnerβs thesis of the closing of the frontier, exerted the most influence in popular culture and government policy making in the twentieth century. He argues that Rooseveltβs view of the frontier myth provided the justification for most of Americaβs expansionist policies, from Rooseveltβs own Rough Riders to Kennedyβs counterinsurgency and Johnsonβs war in Vietnam.
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