Imagined Frontiers: Contemporary America and Beyond. By Carl Abbott
Imagined Frontiers: Contemporary America and Beyond By Carl Abbott. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. x 259 pp. Illustrations, maps, table, notes, index. $19.95, paper. "A frontier," Carl Abbott proclaims in Imagined Frontiers "is an edge a line on a map and the territories and communities that surround that line." (3) From this definition, Abbott explores the ways that visions of frontiers whether in South Florida, Portland, Oregon, or even the planet Mars have shaped American culture in the second half of the twentieth century. Though he acknowledges scholarly critiques of the frontier concept, he argues that it remains "useful precisely because it has so many nested or overlapping meanings that artists can play with in different dabnet{at}fullerton.edu