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Description of  Frontiers of Boyhood: Imagining America, Past and Future (Volume 7) (William F. Cody Series on the History and Culture of the American West)

When Horace Greeley published his famous imperative, Go West, young man, and grow up with the country, the frontier was already synonymous with a distinctive type of idealized American masculinity. But Greeleys exhortation also captured popular sentiment surrounding changing ideas of American boyhood for many educators, politicians, and parents, raising boys right seemed a pivotal step in securing the growing nations future. This book revisits these narratives of American boyhood and frontier mythology to show how they worked against and through one anotherand how this interaction shaped ideas about national character, identity, and progress. The intersection of ideas about boyhood and the frontier, while complex and multifaceted, was dominated by one arresting notion: in the space of the West, boys would grow into men and the fledgling nation would expand to fulfill its promise. Read more