Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis," described the frontier as the lifeblood of American ideals and warned that the frontier's closing would mean the factors that once enabled America to prosper could no longer be relied on in the century ahead. Boy scouting was shaped by a similar nostalgia for the vanishing frontier as well as…

Responding largely to the impact of industrialization and urbanization on American society, educators across the country embraced the "school gardening" and "nature study" movements advocated by Dewey. Promoted in varying degrees as ways to enhance learning, yield food for their schools, build character, and improve…

Urban history has made impressive gains since 1960. Three book-length studies of Mexican Americans in the southwestern cities of Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and El Paso have contributed significantly to historians understanding of the process of urbanization. (RM)