13 h 17 minAudiobook13 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 13 h 17 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if America’s identity takes shape not on the Atlantic coast, but along a moving western frontier?
In The Frontier in American History, Frederick Jackson Turner asks readers to rethink what shapes a nation. Where earlier historians look chiefly to European roots, he turns west. His central essay, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, argues that repeated settlement changes American habits, politics and ideals.
This collection follows that argument into essays on sections, the Mississippi Valley, the pioneer ideal and the West as a safety valve. Turner links western land to democracy, individualism and national union. His influential, disputed thesis offers a way to examine how Americans explain themselves—and whose lives that explanation leaves outside its frame.
What you’ll discover
- A frontier in motion Follow Turner’s account of settlement as a moving line rather than a fixed place.
- Old habits under pressure Explore his claim that frontier conditions reshape settlers and loosen inherited ways of life.
- Land and political ideals Consider why Turner ties access to western land to democracy and rugged individualism.
- Regions within a nation Look beyond the central thesis to sections, the Mississippi Valley and the pioneer ideal.
- An argument to question Weigh an influential interpretation while noticing its limits, especially its treatment of Native peoples.
Who will love it
Readers who like big ideas about how nations form, who enjoy American history told through settlers and landscapes, and who want the thesis behind debates about democracy.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Start from the Great West, not the coast
- Each new frontier restarted American society afresh
- Traders, ranchers and farmers crossed the land in waves
- The frontier pulled the young nation together
- Free land bred democracy and its dangers
- New England's first frontier already looked western
- The Old West split coast from interior
- The Middle West and the great valleys took center stage
- The West was a form of society, and democracy was its gift
- Pioneer ideals must now be carried forward by new means
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La frontiera nella storia americana
by Frederick Jackson Turner · 1920
An 1890 census note says the frontier line can no longer be drawn, and one historian asks what that ends.
Challenging5–10 hours to readItaliano
Learn a language with challenging classicsSpagnoloFranceseTedescoItalianoGiapponesePortogheseIngleseHow we measure levels
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In short
What if the shape of a nation came from a line on a map? In 1890 the census office announced that settlements had broken up the unsettled area, so no frontier line could be drawn any longer.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Start from the Great West, not the coast
Turner opens with a short government notice. The census office of 1890 stated that a frontier line could no longer be traced. He reads this as the end of a great movement. Until then, he argues, American history is largely the story of settling the Great West.
Other peoples grew inside a limited area and then met other nations. The United States is different. Each time settlers reached a new region, the whole process began again from simple beginnings. So Turner asks readers to stand not on the Atlantic coast but in the Great West.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 13 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1920
- Language
- Italiano
- Reading time
- 8 h 40 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-frontier-in-american-history.
Turner, F. J. (2026). The frontier in American history. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-frontier-in-american-history (Original work published 1920)
Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-frontier-in-american-history.
@book{turner2026frontier,
author = {Turner, Frederick Jackson},
title = {The Frontier in American History},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-frontier-in-american-history},
note = {First published 1920}
}
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What is The Frontier in American History about?
It collects essays and addresses by Frederick Jackson Turner arguing that free land and westward settlement shaped American institutions, democracy and character. The essays follow the frontier from the Atlantic coast to the Middle West and ask what its closing means.
What is the frontier thesis?
It is Turner's idea that the repeated experience of settling free land at the edge of the nation made Americans individualistic, inventive and democratic, and set them apart from Europeans. Each new frontier started society over again.
What did Turner mean by the frontier?
He meant the moving edge of settlement, the near boundary of free land, and not a fortified border like those in Europe. The census treated it as the line where population reached at least two people per square mile.
The author
Frederick Jackson Turner
1861–1932 · American historian
Frederick Jackson Turner was an American historian born in Portage, Wisconsin, in 1861. He taught at the University of Wisconsin and later at Harvard University. He wrote The Frontier in American History, published in 1920. He lived in California in his later years and died in Pasadena in 1932.
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