A very good and often entertaining summary of the involvement of the British upper crust in the development of the western United States—a subject most often treated only in the small magazines of western historical societies. This is, I think, the first time the topic has been explored in depth by a British author, so the book has a different perspective than that provided in 1989 by Lawrence Woods in his excellent but long out-of print “British Gentlemen in the Wild West: The Era of the Intensely English Cowboy.” New material from British journals, and quotations from letters and diaries found in British repositories make the presentation fresh, and Pagnamenta also benefited from, as he acknowledges, his access to previously unavailable electronic databases of early western newspapers.

The chapters chronicling the role of early British entrepreneurs and sportsmen in romancing the region to their countrymen and inspiring them to follow in their footsteps are particularly strong, as is the “epilogue” that chronicles the American reaction in the late nineteenth century to what was perceived as a British attempt to recreate its system of property landlordism in the American West. All in all, a well-written, well-paced, and eminently readable book. ( )