Forcefully and fluently written, this book charts not only the history of the Western but the social history of the US in the 20th century. Mirror for Prewar America: Stagecoach and the Western, 1939-1941 * Puritan Paradigms: My Darling Clementine and Duel in the Sun * "The Lonely Crowd," Catholicism and Consensus on the Prairie: Red River, Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon * Dysfunctional Family Structures in Classic Westerns, 1950-1961: The Gunfighter, Shane, The Searchers and The Last Sunset * Politics and Codes of Masculinity in Late 1950s Star Westerns: The Big Country and Warlock * "No More West to Win": How the West Was Won and the Elegiac Westerns of 1962 * A Genre in Flux, a Nation in Turmoil: The Vietnamization of the Western in Mid-1960s America * Receding Frontiers, Narrowing Options: The Wild Bunch and the Western in Richard Nixon's America * Legends Revisited, Legends Revised in "Bicentennial Westerns": Buffalo Bill and the Indians, The Outlaw Josey Wales and The Shootist * Conclusion * Notes * Filmography * Bibliography * Index.