Gunfighter Nation: Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America, The

Gunfighter Nation completes Richard Slotkins 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 Roosevelts The Winning of the West), rather than Frederick Jackson Turners 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 Roosevelts view of the frontier myth provided the justification for most of Americas expansionist policies, from Roosevelts own Rough Riders to Kennedys counterinsurgency and Johnsons war in Vietnam.