The Sagebrush Trail: Western Movies and Twentieth-Century America. By Richard Aquila.

Abstract

The Sagebrush Trail: Western Movies and Twentieth-Century America . Modern American West Series. By Richard Aquila. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015. xi + 371 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $65.00, cloth; $35.00, paper.) Although no longer a centerpiece of motion picture releases, the Western’s cultural importance continues to attract scholars. Richard Aquila has drawn selectively from the considerable body of published scholarship, together with his own take on Western films, for this up-to-date overview of the genre’s history. More than tracing the history of the genre, Aquila examines how the Western has shaped and reshaped images of the mythic West in ways that “keep pace with corresponding changes in American history and culture” (p. 10). While not a novel approach to the genre, Aquila extends it … j-lenihan{at}tamu.edu