New Frontiers.

In July 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932) delivered an address on "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." "The true point of view in the history of this nation," Turner argued, "is not the Atlantic coast, it is the great West." Throughout the course of American history, the "West" had beckoned to explorers, settlers, and speculators, inspiring all with visions of untamed land and untapped resources. Turner's dismissal of "the Atlantic coast" turned traditional cultural valuations topsy-turvy. In literary circles, the "East" had always reigned supreme. New England monopolized the literary marketplace through the mid nineteenth century. New York, the center of commerce, began angling for position as the American cultural capital in the decades following the Civil War. Yet even as the frontier celebrated by Turner "closed," a...