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October 2016 Vol. 54 No. 2

With her study of this rich yet still neglected topic, Jones joins a growing number of scholars writing on hunting's power and place in US history. Hunting, Jones argues, was not just a matter of subsistence or provision for markets or a passionate pursuit of the rich. It was central to the taking of the 19th-century American West. Grounding her study of hunting in performance affords Jones powerful analytical tools through which to recount and assess hunting stories for their symbolic and material power. Hunting was an exercise in dominance and communion, and storytelling about people, animals, and nature continued long after the hunter returned from the trail with trophies, tales, and claims to status. As a measure of hunting’s power, Jones deftly offers a sophisticated account of hunting and its evocation by women and Indigenous peoples to challenge the fraternity of white male hunters and the power they wielded. Her compelling examples and anecdotes artfully illustrate her arguments, and her facilities as an imaginative historian are everywhere evident, but her prose sometimes becomes too clever and betrays her considerable skills as a writer.

--J. W. Cox, University of Arizona

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.