AS AN AMERICAN on a long trek overseas in 1996, I was surprised at each stop--Italy, Germany, Egypt, Great Britain--to discover that much of the fare on television consists of old American movies, more specifically, old westerns. Each movie was dubbed into the local language, ending with Gary Cooper (or his equivalent) riding off into the sunset. The ubiquity of these images suggests to me that, in any land and language, the American Old West speaks in some important way to the human ...