Cultural Writing. Jewish Studies. American West. The art and essays in JEWISH LIFE IN THE AMERICAN WEST together yield a volume of history that explores not only the impact on Jews in the West but the West's impact on American Jews. "An intriguing and illuminating glimpse of an overlooked chapter in the history of the American frontier. The role of Jewish movie moguls.for example, is deeply familiar, but the real-life saga of Jewish cowboys and collective farmers is considerably fresher" - Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times. Ava F. Kahn is a visiting scholar at the California Studies Center, University of California, Berkeley. She is author of Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush: A Documentary History, 1849-1880 and co-editor of California Jews, and she was consulting historian for the exhibition Jewish Life in the American West: Generation to Generation, on which this book was based.