Hutton, Paul Andrew 1949-

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HUTTON, Paul Andrew 1949-

PERSONAL: Born October 23, 1949, in Frankfurt, West Germany (now Germany); son of Paul Andrew (an American soldier) and Louise (a homemaker; maiden name, Johnson) Hutton; married Vicki Bauer, July 25, 1972 (divorced, August, 1984); children: Laura Bauer. Education: Indiana University, Bloomington, B.A., 1972, M.A., 1974, Ph.D., 1981.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of History, 1104 Mesa Vista Hall, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Educator and writer. Utah State University, Logan, visiting instructor, 1977-80, assistant professor of American history, 1980-84; University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, assistant professor, 1984-86, became associate professor and then professor of history. Executive director, Western History Association; vice president, Western Writers of America.

Has appeared in, written, or narrated more than 100 television documentaries, many available on video cassette, for CBS, NBC, PBS. TBS, TNN, A&E, Discovery, Disney, and the History Channel, including The Real West, 67 episodes, 1992-1994; "River Pirates," episode of In Search of History, 1999; "America's Changing West," episode of Colores, KNME (PBS), 1999; "Betrayal at Little Big Horn," episode of The New Explorers, 1998; "Law and Order in the Real West," 1998; "George Armstrong Custer: America's Golden Cavalier," episode of Biography, 1997.

MEMBER: Organization of American Historians, Western History Association, Historians Film Committee.

AWARDS, HONORS: Spur Award, Western Writers of America, 1986, Evans Biography Prize, Brigham Young University, 1986, Ray Allen Billington Award, Organization of American Historians, 1987, and Texas Literary Award, Southwestern Booksellers Association, 1987, all for Phil Sheridan and His Army.; Vivian A. Paladin Award for best essay to appear in Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Montana Historical Society, 1991, for "Correct in Every Detail"; John M. Carroll Literary Award, Little Big Horn Associates, 1992, for The Custer Reader; President's Award, Western Writers of America, 1998; Western Heritage Award for outstanding magazine article of 1995, National Cowboy Hall of Fame, 1996, for "Showdown at the Hollywood Coral"; Western Heritage Award for outstanding magazine article of 1998, 1999, for "T. R. Takes Charge"; Stirrup Award, Western Writers of America, 1999, for "Dee Brown: A Life with Books."

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Custer and His Times, Little Big Horn Associates (LaGrange Park, IL), 1981.

Phil Sheridan and His Army, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1985.

(Editor) Henry Eugene Davies, Ten Days on the Plains, Southern Methodist University Press (Dallas, TX), 1985.

Soldiers West: Biographies from the Military Frontier, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1987.

(Editor) The Custer Reader, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1992.

(Editor, with Robert C. Ritchie) Frontier and Region: Essays in Honor of Martin Ridge, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1997.

Contributor to periodicals, including TV Guide, American West, Texas Monthly, American History Illustrated, Frontier Times, and True West. Western History Quarterly, assistant editor, 1977-79, associate editor, 1979-84; New Mexico Historical Review, editor, 1984—.

SIDELIGHTS: Paul Andrew Hutton is an award-winning writer of books, articles, and documentaries pertaining to the history of the American West. Frontier and Region: Essays in Honor of Martin Ridge, of which Hutton is coeditor, is a compilation of twelve essays by twelve western scholars (including Hutton) that won considerable acclaim from reviewers.

Ridge was an important and highly regarded historian and a familiar figure at American and western history conferences around the nation. He was editor of the Journal of American History from 1996 to 1997 and director of research at the Huntington Library until his retirement in 1992. "Through the years, he advised, directed, and encouraged hundreds of senior and younger scholars in their manifold projects," wrote Richard W. Etulain for the Journal of American History. Most essays in this collection, prepared by Ridge's colleagues and students, were written from research undertaken, at least in part, at the Huntington. All essays were delivered as papers upon Ridge's retirement.

David M. Emmons explained in the Pacific Historical Review that a collection of this type is called a "festschrifte," German for "happy writings." He commented: "These are festive and celebratory, usually offered up in honor of the career of someone the essayists know and especially like. . . . Ridge is a wonderful historian and a warm and generous man." Hutton, one of Ridge's students, wrote in what Etulain called a "very helpful" introduction to the book that the essays "have no social, ideological, or historiographical axe to grind, but rather seek to reaffirm the vitality of traditional approaches to the history of the American West" and that they "lack the somewhat contentious tone of much of the recent scholarly debate on the West." This fact, commented Emmons, is attributable to Ridge, the essayists' mentor: "All were done with the same conspicuous lack of rancor or grandstanding that marked Ridge's career."

The collection consists of a wide range of topics divided into four sections. The first comprises essays by well-known regional historians such as James H. Madison, who deals with differences between the Midwest and the West; Walter Nugent, who focuses on "finding" the West; and James P. Ronda, who investigates how rivers provided a means of western exploration. In the second section, Richard Lowitt, Donald J. Pisani, Charles E. Rankin, and Melody Webb look at controversies surrounding water rights and the development of national parks and explore Western journalism and federalism.

Part three, titled "The Popular West," is what Etulain called "lively essays on Old West figures such as Davey Crockett, Annie Oakley, and Buffalo Bill Cody." These essays are written by Hutton, Glenda Riley, and Richard White. Louis Hart pointed out in Wild West that Hutton's essay reveals that "the greatest impetus to the growth of the Crockett legend came from the Crockett almanacs." Part four contains essays by Albert L. Hurtado and Howard R. Lamar that focus on historian Herbert E. Bolton and four authors who, noted Etulain, "imaginatively used the frontier in their writings."

Of the entire collection, Etulain commented: "Taken together, these essays illustrate the broad range of interests of the diligent historian they honor."