This is a welcome book about a giant and largely unrecognized historian who founded the Borderlands School of History emphasizing Spain’s critical role in America’s early years. The biography offers a new critical assessment of the life, works, and ideas of Herbert Eugene Bolton (1870-1953) He became a leading historian of the American West, Mexico, and latin America. Bolton was a pupil of Frederick Jackson Turner and his research took him not only to the archives and libraries of Mexico but out onto the trails blazed by Spanish soldiers amd missionaries during the colonial period. Interest in this era waned after his death and Hurtado examines his life against the backdrop of the cultural and political controversies of his day. Hopefully, another scholar and a university will carry on his work in a field that is seeing significant emerging new evidence of how important Spain and its people were to the development of the New World. Berkeley, 2012 University of California Press 1st Ed., 6 x 9, 370 Pgs., HB.