Re-living the American Frontier

I read the Little House on the Prairie books as a kid, and one of the things I could agree on with my mother was that, while fascinating, I did not find back-breaking subsistence work cute or fun, and resisted all Girl Scout attempts to dip candles, make outdoor ovens or wear bonnets, and never found Pa's assholish aversion to not-dirt floors charming. Later, I learned more about Rose Wilder Lane, and how the books picked up their very distinct political edge (and modern works that highlight the exploitation of the Osage people). Living in the Upper Midwest, I was baffled by people who would take vacations to Wilder tourist locations in South Dakota. Reagin examines the culture of fandom around Laura Ingalls Wilder in the US and Karl May in Germany (where, to get around the government, East German western fans remade themselves into an oddly performed solidarity movement with indigenous people while West Germans focused on rootin-tootin cowboys). Her big insight is to look at them, their merchandising, tourism, special events and online presence in parallel to other modern fandoms, rather than as historical re-enactors. This would be a great read for public history courses, regional tourism and memory studies, especially to understand the economic dependence of some small towns on putting forth a very specific, desired version of now contested "history."