Terry L. Anderson & Peter J. Hill’s The Not so Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier
Terry Anderson and P.J. Hill have written and taught about the role of property rights in the West for more than thirty years, together and separately. Both played key roles in elaborating the crucial role of property rights int eh history of the American West. In this volume they draw on those thirty-plus years of study and teaching, as well as their personal histories as Montanans and descendants of pioneers, to give an account of the role of property rights on the frontier. Just as Sergio Leone remade the western beginning with the groundbreaking A Fistful of Dollars to the film that summarized the themes of his prior work, Once Upon a Time in the West, so Anderson and Hill have remade the history of the American West with their work, from their first article to this book. Their work shares three central features of Leone’s: a realist’s view of the West, recognition of nuance, and close-up views of the people and institutions of the West. Like Leone, they have remade our understanding of the West.
