Bibliography of the Western United States is a small selection of the most useful books and articles on the Western United States.

See also Bibliography of the American frontier. Bibliography of California history, Bibliography of Idaho history, Bibliography of Montana history, Bibliography of Oregon history, Bibliography of Wyoming history.

Surveys

Beck, Warren A. and Ynez D. Haase. Historical Atlas of the American West (University of Oklahoma Press, 1989). online Brands, H.W. Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West ((Basic Books, 2019) Deutsch, Sarah. Making a Modern U.S. West: The Contested Terrain of a Region and Its Borders 1898–1940. (U of Nebraska Press, 2022). Deverell, William, ed. A Companion to the American West. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004). Etulain, Richard W. Beyond the Missouri: The Story of the American West. (U of New Mexico Press, 2006). online Findlay, John M. The Mobilized American West, 1940–2000 (U of Nebraska Press, 2023), comprehensive history online review of this book Hine, Robert V., and John Mack Faragher. The American West: A New Interpretive History. (Yale University Press [UP], 2000). Lamar, Howard R., ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West. (Yale UP, 1998). expanded 2nd edition with massive coverage of all aspects by experts Lamar, Howard R., ed. The Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West. (Crowell, 1977); 2400 short articles by 200 experts; online Limerick, Patricia. Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past Of The American West (WW Norton, 1987). Malone, Michael P., and Richard W. Etulain. The American West: A Twentieth-Century History. (U of Nebraska Press, 1989). Milner II, Clyde A. et al. eds. The Oxford History of the American West. (Oxford UP, 1994), long essays by scholars; online Milner II, Clyde A. et al. eds. Major Problems in the History of the American West (2nd ed. 1997), excerpts from primary sources and scholarly studies.

Pomeroy, Earl. The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. (U of Washington Press, 1973). online Utley, Robert M. The Story of The West: A History of the American West and Its People. (Penguin Books, 2003). White, Richard. A New History of the American West: 'It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own.''' (U of Oklahoma Press, 1991), a major scholarly survey, focused on the post-1890 far west.

Wishart, David J. Encyclopedia of the Great Plains (U of Nebraska Press, 2004) online

Wrobel, David M. America's West: A History, 1890–1950 (Cambridge UP, 2017) online

Culture

Boatright, Mody C. "The Formula in Cowboy Fiction and Drama." Western Folklore (1969): 136–145. in JSTOR Davis, David B. "Ten-Gallon Hero." American Quarterly (1954) 6#2 pp: 111–125. in JSTOR Day, Kirsten. Cowboy Classics: The Roots of the American Western in the Epic Tradition (Edinburgh UP, 2016). Dinan, John A. The Pulp Western: A Popular History of the Western Fiction Magazine in America (Borgo Press, 1983). Durham, Philip. "The Cowboy and the Myth Makers." Journal of Popular Culture (1967) 1#1 pp: 58–62. Frye, Steven, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Literature of the American West (Cambridge UP, 2016)

Lusted, David. The Western. (Pearson/Longman, 2003), on films MacDonald, J. Fred. Who Shot the Sheriff?: The Rise and Fall of the Television Western (Praeger, 1987). McVeigh, Stephen. The American Western (Edinburgh UP, 2007.) Marsden, Michael T. "The Popular Western Novel as a Cultural Artifact." Arizona and the West (1978): 203–214. online Rollins, Peter C. and John E. O'Connor, eds. Hollywood's West: The American frontier in film, television and history (UP of Kentucky, 2006) online Simmon, Scott. The Invention of the Western Film: A Cultural History of the Genre's First Half Century (Cambridge UP, 2003) Witschi, Nicolas S. ed. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West. (2011) excerpt

Economy

Fite, Gilbert C. The Farmer's Frontier, 1865–1900. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966). Graham, Don. Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire. (John Wiley and Sons, 2003). online Nash, Gerald D. A.P. Giannini and the Bank of America. (U of Oklahoma Press, 1992), it was originally based in California Nash, Gerald D. The Federal Landscape: An Economic History of the Twentieth-Century West. (U of Arizona Press. 1999). online O'Mara, Margaret. The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America. (Penguin Press, 2019). Robbins, William G. Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West. (U Press of Kansas, 1994). Rundell Jr., Walter. Oil in West Texas and New Mexico: A Pictorial History of the Permian Basin. (Texas A & M UP, 1982) online Schwantes, Carlos Arnaldo. Going Places: Transportation Redefines the Twentieth-Century West. (Indiana UP, 2003). online White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (W.W. Norton, 2011)

Environment

Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire : A Season in the Wilderness. (McGraw-Hill, 1968). Brinkley, Douglas. The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper, 2009)

Castaneda, Christopher J., and Lee M. A. Simpson, eds. River city and valley life: an environmental history of the Sacramento region (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2013) in California; online Cawley, R. McGreggor. Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics (1993), on conservatives Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (W.W. Norton, 1991) Cunfer, Geoff, and Bill Waiser, eds. Bison and people on the North American Great Plains: A deep environmental history (Texas A&M University Press, 2016) online. Dant, Sara. Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West. (U of Nebraska Press, 2023). online, also see online book review Dobie, J. Frank. The Longhorns. (Little, Brown, 1941). Flores, Dan. The natural west: Environmental history in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (U of Oklahoma Press, 2003) online. Fradkin, Philip. A River No More: The Colorado River and the West (1981) Frehner, Brian, and Kathleen A. Brosnan, eds. The Greater Plains: Rethinking a Region's Environmental Histories (U of Nebraska Press, 2021) online. Harvey, Mark W. T. "Echo Park, Glen Canyon, and the postwar wilderness movement." Pacific Historical Review (1991): 43–67. online Colorado River region Hollon, W. Eugene. The Great American Desert, Then and Now. (U of Nebraska Press, 1975). Huggard, Christopher, and Arthur R. Gómez. Forests under Fire: A Century of Ecosystem Mismanagement in the Southwest. (U of Arizona Press, 2001). Hundley Jr., Norris. Water and the West: The Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West. (2nd ed. U of California Press, 2009). Logan, Michael F. Desert Cities: The Environmental History of Phoenix and Tucson. (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2006). Lowitt, Richard. The New Deal and the West (Indiana UP, 1984) online Pisani, Donald J. Water, Land, and Law in the West: The Limits of Public Policy, 1850-1920. (UP of Kansas, 1996). Reisner, Marc. Cadillac desert: The American West and its disappearing water (Penguin, 1993) says the villain was the federal Bureau of Reclamation see ; also see online copy. Stegner, Wallace. The American West As Living Space. (U of Michigan Press, 1987). Sturgeon, Stephen Craig. The politics of western water: the congressional career of Wayne Aspinall (U of Arizona Press, 2002). Vogel, David. California greenin': How the Golden State became an environmental leader (Princeton UP, 2019). White, Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. (Hill and Wang, 1995). Wild, Peter. Pioneer Conservationists of Western America (1979) online Worster, Donald. Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (Oxford UP, 1992) online Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. (Oxford UP, 1979). Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. (Pantheon Books, 1987).

Frontier

Billington, Ray Allen and Martin Ridge. Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier. Abridged ed. (U of New Mexico Press, 2001). online

Billington, Ray Allen. The Far Western Frontier, 1830–1860. (Harper and Row, 1959) Davis, William C. The American Frontier: Pioneers, Settlers, & Cowboys, 1800–1899. (U of Oklahoma Press, 1999). online Hawgood, John A. America's Western Frontiers: The Exploration and Settlement of the Trans-Mississippi West. (Knopf, 1969). Hyde, Anne F. Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860. (U of Nebraska Press, 2011). Paxson, Frederic Logan. History of the American frontier, 1763–1893. (Houghton Mifflin, 1924); An old survey by leading authority; Pulitzer Prize. online Paxson, Frederic Logan. The Last American Frontier. (Macmillan, 1910). online Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. (Holt, 1920) West, Elliott. Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion. (U of Nebraska Press, 2023). online

Gender and race

Allmendinger, Blake. Imagining the African American West (U of Nebraska Press, 2005). online Bernardin, Susan, ed. The Routledge Companion to Gender and the American West (2022) excerpt Cronon, William, et al. “Women and the West: Rethinking the Western History Survey Course.” Western Historical Quarterly 17#3 (1986), pp. 269–90 online Farrington, Brenda Gail, and Gordon Morris Bakken, eds. Encyclopedia of Women in the American West (SAGE, 2003) Frye, Steven, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Literature of the American West (Cambridge UP, 2016) chapters 11-15 cover Native American; Chicana/o; Asian American; and African American topics. Gutierrez, David G. et al. "Significant to Whom?: Mexican Americans and the History of the American West" in A New Significance: Re-Envisioning the History of the American West ed. by Clyde A. Milner. (1996) pp.67-105. Johnson, Michael K. Hoo-Doo cowboys and bronze buckaroos: Conceptions of the African American West (UP of Mississippi, 2014), focus on popular culture; online. Ling, Huping, and Allan W. Austin. Asian American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia (Routledge, 2015) contents. Meier, Matt S., and Margo Gutiérrez. The Mexican American experience: an encyclopedia (Greenwood, 2003). online Okihiro, Gary Y. ed. The Columbia Guide to Asian American History (Columbia UP, 2001) online Stauffer, Helen Winter, and Susan J. Rosowski, eds. Women and western American literature (Whitston, 1982) White, Richard. "Race relations in the American West." American Quarterly 38.3 (1986): 396-416. online Zhao, Xiaojian and Edward J.W. Park, eds. Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History (3 vol. Greenwood, 2013)

Historiography

August, Jack L. "The Future of Western History: The Third Wave.” Journal of Arizona History 27#2 (1986), pp. 229–44. online Billington, Ray Allen. America's Frontier Heritage. (U of New Mexico Press, 1984). online Cronon, William, George A. Miles, and Jay Gitlin, eds. Under an open sky: rethinking America's Western past (WW Norton & Company, 1993) 14 topical essays by experts. Etulain, Richard W. Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry. (U of New Mexico Press, 1999). Etulain, Richard W. The American West and Its Interpreters. (U of New Mexico Press, 2023). Etulain, Richard W. Writing Western History: Essays On Major Western Historians (U of Nevada Press, 2002). Faragher, John Mack, ed. Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: The Significance of the Frontier in American History and Other Essays. (Holt, 1994). Frantz, Joe B. Aspects of the American West: Three Essays. (Texas A&M UP, 1976). Gressley, Gene. "Whither Western American History? Speculations on a Direction," Pacific Historical Review 53, no. 4 (1984): 483–501.