A major goal of the New Western History is to chronicle the vast diversity of western experience. In this pathbreaking anthology, coeditors Elizabeth Jameson and Susan Armitage-who brought us "The Women’s West in 1987"-meet that challenge by bringing together twenty-nine essays that present women of all races as actors in their own lives and in the history of the American West and locate them in a framework that connects gender, race, and class. In mythic sagas of the American West, the wide western range offered boundless opportunity to a limited cast of white men. Buffalo roamed, deer and antelope played, and women’s voices were never heard. Writing the Range allows us to hear many long-silenced women: Spanish-Mexican settlers and American Indians on New Spain’s northern frontiers; Chinese, Basque, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Slavic, and Irish immigrants; film stars Dolores del Rio and Lupe Velez; Navajos and African Americans who moved to western cities during World War II; and the activist Mothers of East Los Angeles, who organized to resist environmental dangers to their community. A valuable introduction to the rapidly changing field of western history, Writing the Range explains clearly how race, class, and culture are constructed and connected. The first section examines issues raised by more than a decade of multicultural western women’s histories; following are six chronological sections spanning four centures. Each section offers a short introduction connecting is essays and placing them in analytic and historical perspective. Clearly written and accessible, Writing the Range makes a major contribution in ethnic history, women’s history, and interpretations of the American West. Destroying the myth that women in the American West were merely the worried wives or saucy saloon singers portrayed in the movies, the 29 essays in this collection show that females played a vital role on the American frontier. The essays often have a critical aspect, making specific arguments about the role women played in the settling of the West, but what is perhaps most enlightening about the book are biographical sketches demonstrating that the some of the most remarkable people taming the frontier were women. Race, class and culture in the women's west is explained and explored in a title which examines issues raised in modern multicultural western women's histories. Essays are organized by chronological focus and provide clear, accessible considerations of women's history and women's experiences in the west. College-level readers will find them scholarly, yet accessible. -- Midwest Book Review Susan Armitage is Professor of History and Women Studies at Washington State University and Editor of Frontiers: A Journal of Women?s Studies . Armitage is a cofounder of the Coalition for Western Women?s History and coeditor of The Women?s West . Elizabeth Jameson is Professor Emerita of History at the University of Calgary and coeditor of Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women’s West and The Women’s West.