The Great American West: Pursuing the American Dream

Kenneth Rendell's fascination with the American West dates back to childhood in the late 1940's, when movies and radio - and, eventually, television - abounded with Western stories.

"My vision of the West at that young age was highly romanticized, " he says. "but that image didn't last long."

He'd soon read enough history to realize that the West of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Hopalong Cassidy was a fantasy world with no connection to reality except the scenery.

"It wasn't this fantasy world t...