Choice 评论

Efforts to assess ethnic influence on almost any subject are inherently fraught with difficulties. Szasz's attempt "to assess the overall impact of the Scottish presence in the Trans-Mississippi West" is no exception. The author (history, Univ. of New Mexico) has put together a historiographical essay, several chapters on specific subjects such as the fur trade, Indians, and western Canada, and a catchall. He also treats the "reality" and the "romance" of the "Victorian West." This work is well written, often amusing, occasionally insightful, and highly speculative, perhaps even imaginative. However, it is based entirely on secondary sources, is primarily anecdotal, and lacks the depth and evidence to merit calling it scholarly. The author is aware of this and cautions that many of the connections he draws between conditioning factors in Scotland and those in the American west are tentative. Anyone of Scottish or Scots-Irish descent should enjoy this work. More serious students will find a fertile mind and food for thought, but a paucity of substance. P. T. Sherrill; emeritus, University of Arkansas at Little Rock