Herbert Eugene Bolton

“A vivid, compelling, and timely biography of an historian who struggled, sometimes against his own prejudices, to make both the United States and American history less provincial. Al Hurtado has managed to capture more than half a century of American intellectual life, social life, and institution building through the story of single man.”—Richard White, author of Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America

“This definitive biography does double duty as a candid chronicle of academic history on the Pacific Slope, with all the rivalries, shifting allegiances, and promotional disputes that swirled around the persistent productivity of Herbert Eugene Bolton, academic archon of the Spanish Borderlands.”—Kevin Starr, University of Southern California

“Al Hurtado fills a void with this comprehensive biography of Herbert Eugene Bolton, the historian who invented the concept of ‘the Spanish Borderlands’ of North America and imagined a hemispheric history of a ‘Greater America’ that transcended national boundaries. Here he is, warts and all, amidst all the messy and fascinating details of his professional life. Deeply researched and written with verve and irony, this is a marvelous read.”—John Mack Faragher, author (with Robert V. Hine) of The American West: A New Interpretive History.