How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay

Stephen Aron's "How the West Was Lost" is the standard work on Kentucky in the frontier and early-statehood eras. He provides cultural, social, political, and economic aspects of the settlement of the state and its transformation from a "good poor man's country" to the slave-holding, aristocratic-led state of Henry Clay in the early nineteenth century. "How the West Was Lost" combines sound analysis and comprehensive research to create a work that will influence scholars for years to come and that provides a road map for future researchers interested in almost any topic in that era of Kentucky history. Complementing the amazing amount of information on early Kentucky, Johns Hopkins Press allowed Aron to include fifty pages of footnotes, which address the historiography and identify key works in addition to providing citations for sources quoted. Aron is one of the best scholars of western/frontier history currently in the field. He presents an even-handed view of America's westward expansion that lies somewhere between Frederick Jackson Turner's triumphalism and the New Western History's demonizing of white settlement.