title: The American West: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
author:  Stephen Aron 
description: <br /><strong>Stephen Aron</strong> is professor of history at UCLA and chair of the Institute for the Study of the American West at the Autry National Center. He is the author of <em>How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay and American Confluence</em>: <em>The Missouri Frontier from</em> <em>Borderland to Border State, the co-author of Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World from the Beginnings of Humankind to the Present</em>, and the co-editor of <em>Trading Cultures: The Worlds of Western Merchants.</em><br />
zlib_text: ![](Images/cover00287.jpeg)
  
    
  
  **BILLIONAIRE WILDERNESS**
  
    
  
  ![](Images/image00294.jpeg)
  
  For a full list of titles in the series, go to
  [https://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/title/princeton-studies-in-
  cultural-
  sociology.html](https://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/title/princeton-
  studies-in-cultural-sociology.html).
  
   _Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American
  West_ by Justin Farrell
  
   _Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times_ by Phillipa
  K. Chong
  
   _The Extreme Gone Mainstream: Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture
  in Germany_ by Cynthia Miller-Idriss
  
   _Seeing the World: How US Universities Make Knowledge in a Global Era_ by
  Mitchell L. Stevens, Cynthia Miller-Idriss & Seteney Shami
  
   _Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel_ by
  Clayton Childress
  
   _A Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in Africa_ by
  Ann Swidler & Susan Cotts Watkins
  
   _Contested Tastes