"This is a full-scale history of the people of the American West, from the ancestral Paleo-Indians, to the Spanish conquistadores and settlers, to the gold rushers, to the myriads who came from every direction in the twentieth century, right up to the late 1990s. Everyone is here - whites from all over Europe and the United States, Latinos, Asians, African-Americans, and Native Americans. Some went west to homestead; others to find gold or, later, oil or the wealth of Silicon Valley; others followed California dreams, some out of Old West mythology; still others simply came to make better lives. This is a story of those millions who came - on foot, on horseback, in wagons, by train, by car, by plane - into the West."--Jacket. "Finally, Nugent examines the West of today: why the coastal and Sunbelt West and the interior West are experiencing such a radical cultural divergence. And he tells us what he projects, on the basis of recent trends, is likely to happen to the people of the West in the next half century."--Jacket.