When it appeared in 1949, the first edition of Ray Allen Billington's Westward Expansion set a new standard for scholarship in western American history, and the book's reputation among historians, scholars, and students grew through four subsequent editions. This abridgment and revision of Billington and Martin Ridge's fifth edition, with a new introduction and additional scholarship by Ridge, as well as an updated bibliography, focuses on the Trans-Mississippi...

Traces the shaping of the West by frontiersmen from diverse cultural and political backgrounds who had to adapt to new ways of living.