Podcasts by New Books in the American West
Interviews with Scholars of the American West about their New Books
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Further podcasts by Marshall Poe
Podcast on the topic Gesellschaft und Kultur
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On the American Heartland's Imperial and White Nationalist Roots from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Great West. Middle America. Flyover Country. The expanse of plains, lakes, forests, and farms, between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains has carried many names. Beginning in the twentieth cen...
ListenLincoln A. Mitchell, "Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ask a Brooklynite over the age of fifty and they’ll likely tell you that baseball’s golden age ended the day the Dodgers and Giants packed up and headed for the West Coast. Not so argues Lincoln A....
ListenChristopher Herbert, "Gold Rush Manliness: Race and Gender on the Pacific Slope" (U Washington Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Not all gold rushes are created equal, argues Christopher Herbert, Associate Professor of History at Columbia Basin College. Dr. Herbert’s new book, Gold Rush Manliness: Race and Gender on the Paci...
ListenDiscussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...
ListenDavid A. Nichols, "Peoples of the Inland Sea: Native Americans and Newcomers in the Great Lakes Region, 1600-1870" (Ohio UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Diverse in their languages and customs, the Native American peoples of the Great Lakes region—the Miamis, Ho-Chunks, Potawatomis, Ojibwas, and many others—shared a tumultuous history. In the coloni...
ListenKent Blansett, "A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and Red Power" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Richard Oakes was a natural born leader whom people followed seemingly on instinct. Thus when he dove into the icy San Francisco Bay in the fall of 1969 on his way to Alcatraz Island, he knew other...
ListenJames Schwoch, "Wired into Nature: The Telegraph and the North American Frontier" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It's been called the first Internet. In the nineteenth century, the telegraph spun a world wide web of cables and poles, carrying electronic signals with unprecedented speed. In order to connect th...
ListenJanne Lahti, "The American West and the World: Transnational and Comparative Perspectives" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the enduring questions in American historiography is: just where exactly is the West? In The American West and the World: Transnational and Comparative Perspectives (Routledge, 2019), Dr. Ja...
ListenFarina King, "The Earth Memory Compass: Diné Landscapes and Education in the Twentieth Century" (UP of Kansas, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When the young Diné boy Hopi-Hopi ran away from the Santa Fe Indian Boarding School in the early years of the twentieth century, he carried with him no paper map to guide his way home. Rather, he u...
ListenJoe Jackson, "Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary" (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Black Elk witnessed some of the most monumental moments in the history of the Lakota and the Northern Great Plains: Red Cloud’s War, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the murder of Crazy Horse, Wou...
ListenKellie Jones, "South of Pico: African American Artists in the 1960s and 1970s" (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
New York City might have been the epicenter of the twentieth century American art scene, but Los Angeles was no slouch either, writes Kellie Jones in South of Pico: African American Artists in the ...
ListenJoshua Reid, "The Sea is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs" (Yale UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1999, the Makahs went out on the Pacific for their first whale hunt in over seventy years. The event drew protests from animal rights activists and local (mostly white) Washingtonians. But to th...
ListenNoenoe K. Silva, "Steel-Tipped Pen: Reconstructing Native Hawaiian Intellectual History" (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The process of colonialism seeks to demean Indigenous intellect and destroy Indigenous literary traditions. Reconstructing those legacies is thus an act of anti-colonial resistance. This is the imp...
ListenMcKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...
ListenConnie Chiang, “Nature Behind Barbed Wire: An Environmental History of the Japanese American Incarceration” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II is a well-known topic in American history and has been the subject of countess books and articles. In Nature Behind Barbed Wire: A...
ListenVictoria Lamont, “Westerns: A Women’s History” (U Nebraska Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Westerns are having a bit of a moment in the early twenty-first century. Westworld was recently nominated for eight Emmys, the hit show Deadwood is slated for a return to television in the next few...
ListenAndrew M. Busch, “City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Austin, Texas has a reputation as a vibrant, youthful capital city buoyed economically and culturally by the University of Texas. In City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justi...
ListenChristina Snyder, “Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson (Oxford, 2017) is a dramatic and vibrant story of a little-known Kentucky school, the Choctaw Academy. Christina Snyder, McCabe-...
ListenLouis Warren, “God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America” (Basic Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Historians and other writers often portray the Ghost Dance religious movement and massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 as endings, the final gasps of armed Native resistance and their older ways of lif...
ListenJoanna Dyl, “Seismic City: An Environmental History of San Francisco’s 1906 Earthquake” (U Washington Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Seismic City: An Environmental History of San Francisco’s 1906 Earthquake (University of Washington Press, 2017), Joanna Dyl documents the course and effects of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake and ...
ListenKristen Epps, “Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras” (U Georgia Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Kansas-Missouri border holds a place of infamy in the history of American slavery as the chief battleground of the Bleeding Kansas crisis of the mid-nineteenth century. Kristen Epps, an associa...
ListenChristina Gish Hill, “Webs of Kinship: Family in Northern Cheyenne Nationhood” (U Oklahoma Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One summer evening discussion on a front porch sparked Webs of Kinship: Family in Northern Cheyenne Nationhood, Christina Gish Hill’s 2017 book from the University of Oklahoma Press. A friend on th...
ListenWilliam S. Kiser, “Borderlands of Slavery: The Struggle Over Captivity and Peonage in the American Southwest” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In recent years, historians have reevaluated the role of unfree labor in the nineteenth century American West. William S. Kiser, an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University – San Anto...
ListenSusan Sleeper-Smith, “Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Historians have gotten the story of the colonial Ohio River Valley all wrong, argues Susan Sleeper-Smith in Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-...
ListenJohn Mackay, “The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle Over the Greatest Riches in the American West” (Scribner, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Mackay’s life began humbly, immigrating as a child from an impoverished Irish household to New York City where he worked selling newspapers in the streets. Within four decades, he was a stakeh...
ListenPekka Hämäläinen, “The Comanche Empire” (Yale UP, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his book, The Comanche Empire (Yale University Press, 2008), Pekka Hämäläinen refutes the traditional story that Indians were bit players or unfortunate victims of the white man’s conquest of th...
ListenDarren Speece, “Defending Giants: The Redwood Wars and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics” (U Washington Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Northern California’s giant redwoods are among the state’s most recognizable natural wonders. These massive trees were also under threat of clear-cut logging for much of the twentieth century, writ...
ListenCary Cordova, “The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), Cary Cordova combines urban, political, and art history to examine how the Mission Di...
ListenAndrew Selee, “Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together” (PublicAffairs, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With so much political effort placed into forcing a wall between the US and Mexico, Andrew Selee’s new book shows how the ties that bind the two countries together are much stronger. Selee has been...
ListenJerry Gonzalez, “In Search of the Mexican Beverly Hills: Latino Suburbanization in Postwar Los Angeles” (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Search of the Mexican Beverly Hills: Latino Suburbanization in Postwar Los Angeles (Rutgers University Press, 2018) by Professor Jerry Gonzalez challenges conventional interpretations of postwar...
ListenNicholas Villanueva Jr., “The Lynching of Mexicans in the Texas Borderlands” (U New Mexico Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
More than just a civil war, the Mexican Revolution in 1910 triggered hostilities along the border between Mexico and the United States. In particular, the decade following the revolution saw a dram...
ListenBrian James Leech, “The City That Ate Itself: Butte, Montana and Its Expanding Berkeley Pit” (U Nevada Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The plight of today’s coal miners has gained significant attention in recent U.S. politics. As coal mining practices and technologies change in the United States, coal miners face job reductions, b...
ListenAndrew Needham, “Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Researching and writing about infrastructure is a tall task. Infrastructure’s vastness, complexity, and, if it’s functioning, invisibility can defy narratives. Andrew Needham, however, succeeds bea...
ListenDaniel Heath Justice, “Why Indigenous Literatures Matter” (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In a remarkable new book, Daniel Heath Justice, an author and professor of First Nations and Indigenous Studies and English at the University of British Columbia, makes an argument for the vitality...
ListenSteven Hackel, “Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father” (Hill and Wang, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When Pope Francis visited the United States in 2015, he canonized the eighteenth-century Franciscan missionary Junípero Serra, rekindling the smoldering controversy that surrounds this historical f...
ListenRosina Lozano, “An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States” (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States (University of California Press, 2018), Rosina Lozano details the entangled relationship between language and notions of individ...
ListenJennifer Graber, “The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West” (Oxford University Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The American West has always been home to many deities, argues Jennifer Graber in The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West (Oxford University Press, 2018). Graber...
ListenDavid J. Silverman, “Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016), David J. Silverman argues that Indian societies adopted firearm te...
ListenFrederick L. Brown, “The City is More Than Human: An Animal History of Seattle” (U Washington Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Not all city dwellers are bipedal, according to Frederick L. Brown, author of The City is More Than Human: An Animal History of Seattle (University of Washington Press, 2016). The history of Seattl...
ListenPeter A. Kopp, “Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley” (U California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Environmental historian Peter A. Kopp‘s book Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley (University of California Press, 2016) examines the fascinating history of a ver...
ListenBrandi Denison, “Ute Land Religion in the American West, 1879-2009” (U Nebraska Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Land is central in the construction of identity for many communities. For Ute Native Americans the meaning of a twelve million acre homeland in western Colorado is intricately linked to the various...
ListenKatrina Jagodinsky, “Legal Codes and Talking Trees” (Yale UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Legal Codes and Talking Trees: Indigenous Women’s Sovereignty in the Sonoran and Puget Sound Borderlands, 1854-1946 (Yale University Press, 2016), Katrina Jagodinsky recovers the stories too oft...
ListenRobert Foxcurran, “Songs Upon the Rivers” (Baraka Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The story of the American West as it is often told typically involves Spanish, British, and American Empires struggling with Indigenous people for control of the vast territory lands and riches fro...
ListenDavid W. Grua, “Surviving Wounded Knee: The Lakotas and the Politics of Memory” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s a sad story known well. In dead of winter at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890, U.S. soldiers with the Seventh Cavalry Regiment gunned down over two hundred Lakota men, women, and children. Their cri...
ListenDan Flores, “Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History” (Basic Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Wile E. Coyote has a family tree with many roots and branches, argues University of Montana A.B. Hammond Professor Emeritus Dan Flores in his recent book, Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural...
ListenJohn Ryan Fischer, “Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Conquest of California and Hawai’i” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Ryan Fischer‘s book Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Conquest of California and Hawai’i (University of North Carolina Press, 2015) is a fascinating look at how a common anim...
ListenBenjamin Madley, “An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873” (Yale UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In less than thirty years, California’s Indian population fell from 150,000 to 30,000. In An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (Yale University P...
ListenDeanne Stillman, “Blood Brothers: The Story of the Strange Friendship between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill” (Simon & Schuster, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the summer of 1885, the Lakota Sioux holy man Sitting Bull toured North America as a member of Buffalo Bill Cody’s famous “Wild West” show. His participation, as Deanne Stillman explains in her ...
ListenSara Dant, “Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From Frederick Jackson Turner to Walter Prescott Webb, the high cliffs of Yosemite to the flat deserts and blasted rock of the Nevada Test Range, the American West has long been defined by its envi...
ListenJohn P. Langellier, “Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Soldiers in the Frontier Army” (Schiffer, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From the American Revolution to the present day, African Americans have stepped forward in their nation’s defense. Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Solders in the Frontier Army (Schiffer, 2016) brea...
ListenRichard Etulain, “The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane” (U. Oklahoma Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Calamity Jane was a celebrity of the 19th century American West, yet the woman portrayed in the newspapers and dime novels was one very different from the actual person. In The Life and Legends of ...
ListenAmy Von Lintel, “Georgia O’Keeffe: Watercolors, 1916-1918” (Radius, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In “Georgia O’Keeffe: At Home in the Wonderful Nothing,” a text accompanying the exhibition catalogue Georgia O’Keeffe: Watercolors 1916-1918 (Radius Books and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, 2016), A...
ListenJason Pierce, “Making the White Man’s West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West” (UP of Colorado, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The West, particularly the mountain West of states like Colorado, Utah, Idaho, has long had an image as a land of white men. This image dates to the 19th century, yet it is counterintuitive. Before...
ListenKevin Bubriski, “Look into My Eyes: Nuevomexicanos por Vida, ’81-’83” (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kevin Bubriski, a New Englander and internationally acclaimed photographer, was a freelance photojournalist when he first arrived in New Mexico in 1981 to study filmmaking in Santa Fe. Bubriski rec...
ListenKenna R. Archer, “Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River” (U of New Mexico, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River (University of New Mexico, 2015), Kenna R. Archer examines the history of the Brazos river. The river, which runs from easte...
ListenFrank P. Barajas, “Curious Unions: Mexican American Workers and Resistance in Oxnard, California, 1898-1961” (U. Nebraska Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Curious Unions: Mexican American Workers and Resistance in Oxnard, California, 1898-1961 (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) Dr. Frank P. Barajas details the central role of Mexican labor in th...
ListenMario Jimenez Sifuentez, “Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest” (Rutgers UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest (Rutgers University Press, 2016), Dr. Mario Jimenez Sifuentez combines U.S. labor, environmental, and Chicana/o history to tell the ...
ListenLori Flores, “Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants and the California Farmworker Movement” (Yale UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants and the California Farmworker Movement (Yale University Press, 2015), Lori A. Flores illuminates a neglected part of Salinas Valley’s ...
ListenMario T. Garcia, “The Chicano Generation: Testimonios of the Movement” (U of California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As multifaceted as it was multinucleated, the Chicana/o Movement of the late-1960s and 1970s was “the largest and most widespread civil rights and empowerment struggle by Mexican Americans in U.S. ...
ListenNatale Zappia, “Traders and Raiders: The Indigenous World of the Colorado Basin, 1540-1859” (UNC Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Traders and Raiders: The Indigenous World of the Colorado Basin, 1540-1859 (UNC Press, 2014) Assistant Professor of History at Whittier College Natale Zappia provides an in-depth look into the “...
ListenAna Elizabeth Rosas, “Abrazando el Espiritu: Bracero Families Confront the U.S.-Mexico Border” (U of California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Emergency Farm Labor Program (a.k.a. Bracero Program) was initiated in 1942 as a bilateral wartime agreement between the governments of the United States and Mexico. The program’s initial objec...
ListenGeraldo L. Cadava, “Standing on Common Ground: The Making of a Sunbelt Borderland” (Harvard UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Due in large part to sensationalist representations in contemporary media and politics, the U.S.-Mexico border is popularly understood as a space of illegal activity defined by threats of foreign i...
ListenAndrew Needham, “Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest” (Princeton UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Last month, VICE NEWS released a short documentary about the Navajo Nation called “Cursed by Coal.” The images and stories confirm the title. “Seems like everything’s just dying out here,” says Nav...
ListenDavid Bullock, “Coal Wars” (Washington State University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
David Bullock is the author of Coal Wars: Unions, Strikes, and Violence in Depression-Era Central Washington (Washington State University Press, 2014). Bullock is professor and is the chair of the ...
ListenDede Feldman, “Inside the New Mexico Senate: Boots, Suits, and Citizens” (University of New Mexico Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dede Feldman is the author of Inside the New Mexico Senate: Boots, Suits, and Citizens (University of New Mexico Press, 2014). Feldman retired from the New Mexico Senate in 2012 and is a former jou...
ListenGilbert Mireles, “Continuing La Causa: Organizing Labor in California’s Strawberry Fields” (Lynne Rienner, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gilbert Mireles is the author of Continuing La Causa: Organizing Labor in California’s Strawberry Fields (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013). He is associate professor of sociology at Whitman College....
ListenThomas H. Guthrie, “Recognizing Heritage: The Politics of Multiculturalism in New Mexico” (University of Nebraska Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
New Mexico is a cultural borderland, marked by the interaction of Indian, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American peoples over the past four hundred years. The question of how to commemorate this hist...
ListenBrendan C. Lindsay, “Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1846-1873” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brendan C. Lindsay‘s impressive if deeply troubling new book centers on two concepts long considered anathema: democracy and genocide. One is an ideal of self-government, the other history’s most u...
ListenChar Miller, “Public Lands, Public Debates: A Century of Controversy” (Oregon State UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From illicit marijuana farms wedged deep in the canyons of the Angeles National Forest to the fire-bombed laboratories of the University of Washington, Char Miller takes readers on a wild romp thro...
ListenHayes Peter Mauro, “The Art of Americanization at the Carlisle Indian School” (University of New Mexico Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Anyone who’s turned on the television in the past several decades is familiar with the ubiquitous before-and-after picture. On the left, your present state: undesirable, out of shape, balding perha...
ListenJace Weaver, “Notes from a Miner’s Canary: Essays on the State of Native America” (University of New Mexico Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Essay collections are often a repository of an author’s lesser works, an attempt by publishers to milk every last penny from a well-regarded scholar. This is not the case with Jace Weaver’s new boo...
ListenEric Gardner, “Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West” (University Press of Mississippi, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we talked with Eric Gardner, who is chair and professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University. The interview focuses on Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West (University...
ListenMalcolm Rohrbough, “The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850” (Indiana UP, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Welcome to New Books in History. In this, our inaugural podcast, we’re honored to have Malcolm Rohrbough on the show. As many of you may know, Mac is a distinguished historian of the American West ...
ListenFarzaneh Hemmasi, "Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Farzaneh Hemmasi is the author of Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music (Duke UP, 2020). The title obviously refers the song "California Dreamin'...
ListenLaura J. Arata, "Race and the Wild West" (U Oklahoma Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After Laura Arata first visited Virginia City, Montana in graduate school, she became fascinated by the story of one historical figure—Sarah Bickford, a former slave, who migrated to this frontier,...
ListenAndrew C. Isenberg, "The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920" (Cambridge UP, 2000) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1800, tens of millions of bison roamed the North American Great Plains. By 1900, fewer than 1,000 remained. In The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (Cambridge UP, 20...
ListenSherry L. Smith, "Bohemians West: Free Love, Family, and Radicals in Twentieth-Century America" (Heyday Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The opening years of the twentieth century saw a grand cast of radicals and reformers fighting for a new America, seeking change not only in labor picket lines and at women’s suffrage rallies but a...
ListenMark Santiago, "A Bad Peace and A Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799" (U Oklahoma Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This attack ended what had bene an uneasy peace betwee...
ListenDavid R. B. Beck, "Unfair Labor?: American Indians and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was in many ways the crowning event of the nineteenth century United States. Held in Chicago, the metropolis of the West, and visited by tens of millions of pe...
ListenColin Woodard, "Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood" (Viking, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Colin Woodard's new book Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood (Viking, 2020) tells the story of the struggle to create a national myth for the United States, one that ...
ListenPolly E. Bugros McLean, "Remembering Lucile: A Virginia Family's Rise from Slavery and a Legacy Forged a Mile High" (UP of Colorado, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1918 Lucile Berkeley Buchanan Jones received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado, becoming its first female African American graduate (though she was not allowed to "walk" at g...
ListenThomas Richards Jr., "Breakaway Americas: The Unmanifest Future of Jacksonian America" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Breakaway Americas: The Unmanifest Future of Jacksonian America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), Thomas Richards Jr., a history teacher at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, argues that th...
ListenJennifer L. Holland, "Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sandie Holguín speaks with?Jennifer L. Holland about her book, Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement (University of California Press, 2020). In addition to her book, Dr. Holland...
ListenNancy Beck Young, "Two Suns of the Southwest" (U Kansas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What does the 1964 presidential election have to teach us about party dynamics, civil rights and polarization? While many scholars have treated the dramatic candidates and characters such as Lyndon...
ListenRomeo Guzman et al., "East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Romeo Guzman's and his colleague's East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte (Rutgers University Press, 2020) is an edited collection of thirty-one essays that trace the experience of a Californ...
ListenMichele Wakin, "Hobo Jungle: A Homeless Community in Paradise" (Lynne Rienner, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Michele Wakin’s new book Hobo Jungle: A Homeless Community in Paradise (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2020) is an up-close exploration of the evolution that has taken place with unsheltered homelessnes...
ListenBrian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...
ListenBetsy Gaines Quammen, "American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God and Public Lands in the West" (Torrey House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 2014, the cattle rancher Cliven Bundy entered the national spotlight after a showdown against federal officials over grazing rights on public lands. Two years later, his sons seized the Malheur ...
ListenChristian Wright, "Carbon County, USA: Miners for Democracy in Utah and the West" (U Utah Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During the early 1970s, a movement of rank-and-file coal miners rose up in Appalachia to challenge mine bosses and stodgy union officials. They sought greater control over the workplace and a broad...
ListenLeslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...
ListenMatt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...
ListenJoseph E. Taylor III, "Persistent Callings: Seasons of Work and Identity on the Oregon Coast" (Oregon State UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
George Perkins Marsh Prize winning environmental historian and geographer Joseph E. Taylor III's new book, Persistent Callings: Seasons of Work and Identity on the Oregon Coast (Oregon State Univer...
ListenJohn Weber, "From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century" (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Weber, Assistant Professor of History at Old Dominion University, discusses his book, From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century(University of N...
ListenWalter Nugent, "Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016" (U Oklahoma Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The political West is far from monochrome, writes Walter Nugent in Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Over the last half century and m...
ListenPhillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...
ListenPhil Christman, "Midwest Futures" (Belt Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What does the future hold for the Midwest? A vast stretch of fertile farmland bordering one of the largest concentrations of fresh water in the world, the Midwestern US seems ideally situated for t...
ListenKristen Millares Young, "Subduction" (Red Hen Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kristen Millares Young’s debut novel, Subduction (Red Hen Press, 2020), provides a lyrical exploration of cultural encounters in the Pacific Northwest. After a Latina anthropologist, Claudia, flees...
ListenMegan Kate Nelson, "The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West" (Scribner, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What did the American Civil War look like from Diné Bikéyah and Apacheria? This is just one of the many questions that drives historian Megan Kate Nelson’s The Three-Cornered War: The Union, The Co...
ListenK. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...
ListenBrian Cervantez, "Amon Carter: A Lone Star Life" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Raised in a one-room log cabin in a small North Texas town, Amon G. Carter (1879–1955) rose to become the founder and publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a seat of power from which he relent...
ListenC. J. Alvarez, "Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record of border building uninvoked. A recent book, wri...
ListenJoshua Specht, "Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why do Americans eat so much beef? In Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2019), the historian Joshua Specht provides a history that ...
ListenJim Rossi, "Cleantech Con Artists: A True Vegas Caper" (2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After Jim Rossi began writing his M.A. thesis in History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the project took an unexpected turn. His research on the solar industry in the Mojave desert brought...
ListenDarnella Davis, "Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage: A Personal History of the Allotment Era" (U New Mexico Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage: A Personal History of the Allotment Era (U New Mexico Press, 2018), Darnella Davis combines the personal with the national in telling the story of al...
ListenRebecca Scofield, "Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West" (U Washington, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rodeo is one of the indelible images of culture in the American West. The John Wayne-like cowboy tenaciously hanging on to the bucking bronc is a classic vision of what it means to be in the West. ...
ListenPekka Hämäläinen, "Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The names of Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse are often readily recognized among many Americans. Yet the longer, dynamic history of the Lakota - a history from which these three famous figu...
ListenLincoln A. Mitchell, "San Francisco Year Zero" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
1978 was the year that changed San Francisco forever, writes Lincoln A. Mitchell in San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team (Rutgers University Press,...
ListenRoland De Wolk, "American Disruptor: The Scandalous Life of Leland Stanford" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With a name associated with the famous university in Palo Alto, Leland Stanford is among the best-known of the famous “robber barons” of the 19th century. Yet as Roland De Wolk explains in American...
ListenS. Deborah Kang, "The INS on the Line: Making Immigration Law on the US-Mexico Border, 1917-1954" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I talked to S. Deborah Kang about her book The INS on the Line: Making Immigration Law on the US-Mexico Border, 1917-1954, published by Oxford University Press in 2017. The INS on the Line ex...
ListenSerin D. Houston, "Imagining Seattle: Social Values in Urban Governance" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Imagining Seattle: Social Values in Urban Governance (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), the geographer Serin Houston complicates Seattle’s liberal and progressive reputation through a close e...
ListenKathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...
ListenTimothy Lehman, "Up the Trail: How Texas Cowboys Herded Longhorns and Became an American Icon" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1866, a sixteen year old cowboy—the name was literal in his case—named J.M. Daugherty bought 1,000 cattle, hired five cowboys, and headed north for Missouri. In Indian Territory, he took the lon...
ListenJ. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...
ListenJon K. Lauck, "The Lost Region: Toward a Revival of Midwestern History" (U Iowa Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The guest this week on Historically Thinking is Jon Lauck. He’s the author of The Lost Region: Toward a Revival of Midwestern History (University of Iowa Press, 2013), which is several things at on...
ListenDavid D. Vail, "Chemical Lands: Pesticides, Aerial Spraying, and Health in North America’s Grasslands since 1945" (U Alabama Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Over fifty years ago, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) scolded the agricultural industry for its profligate spread of “poison” and pesticides “indiscriminately from the skies.” Now, in Chemical...
ListenKathryn E. O’Rourke, "O’Neil Ford on Architecture" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
O’Neil Ford on Architecture (University of Texas Press, 2019) brings together Ford’s major professional writings and speeches for the first time. Revealing the intellectual and theoretical underpin...
ListenNancy Langston, "Sustaining Lake Superior: An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World" (Yale UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When people today visit or imagine Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world, they often perceive a cold, remote, and pristine body of water, relatively untouched by industrialization...
ListenJeffrey Ostler, "Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jeffrey Ostler’s Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (Yale University Press, 2019) is the first of what will be a two-volume set...
ListenErik Loomis, "Empire of Timber: Labor Unions and the Pacific Northwest Forests" (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Empire of Timber: Labor Unions and the Pacific Northwest Forests (Cambridge University Press, 2015), the historian Erik Loomis examines the relationship between workers and their environments in...
ListenDavid M. Wrobel, "America's West: A History, 1890-1950" (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In America's West: A History, 1890-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), David M. Wrobel describes a sixty year period of remarkable change for the vast region. By focusing on politics, demograp...
ListenLukas Rieppel, "Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After the discoveries of dinosaur fossils in the American West in the late nineteenth century, the United States became world renown for vertebrate paleontology. In his new book Assembling the Dino...
ListenMonica Muñoz Martinez, "The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas" (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On January 28, 1918, just outside of town of Porvenir, Texas, US Army servicemen, Texas Rangers, and civilians murdered 15 unarmed Mexican men and boys. This massacre was not an aberration, writes ...
ListenAndrew Torget, "Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850" (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The secession of Texas from Mexico was a dry run for the slaveholder’s republic of the Confederate States of America, argues Andrew Torget in Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformatio...
ListenElaine Hampton and Cynthia Ontiveros, "Copper Stain: ASARCO’s Legacy in El Paso" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Copper Stain: ASARCO’s Legacy in El Paso (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019), Elaine Hampton and Cynthia Ontiveros tell the story of how a Mexican American community in El Paso have fought back...
ListenLaura Alice Watt, "The Paradox of Preservation: Wilderness and Working Landscapes at Point Reyes National Seashore" (U California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Wilderness,” “nature,” and their “preservation” are concepts basic to how the National Park Service organizes our relationship to American land. They are also contested concepts, geographer and en...
ListenDouglas Sheflin, "Legacies of Dust: Land Use and Labor on the Colorado Plains" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The “Dust Bowl” remains a mainstay in American history textbooks. When dust storms swept over the southern plains in the 1930s, they upended farming communities and left thousands of migrants in se...
ListenLynn Downey, "Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World" (U Massachusetts Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nearly every consumer today is familiar with the name Levi Strauss thank to the jeans that bear his name. As Lynn Downey explains in her book Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World ...
ListenMelvin C. Johnson, "Life and Times of John Pierce Hawley: A Mormon Ulysses of the American West" (Greg Kofford Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Life and Times of John Pierce Hawley: A Mormon Ulysses of the American West (Greg Kofford Books, 2019) narrates the wide-ranging life of John Hawley’s search for an authentic Mormon faith. Melvin C...
ListenGenevieve Carpio, "Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race (University of California Press, 2019), Professor Genevieve Carpio considers tensions around mobility and settlement ...
ListenLaura R. Barraclough, "Charros: How Mexican Cowboys Are Remapping Race and American Identity" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Charros: How Mexican Cowboys Are Remapping Race and American Identity (University of California Press, 2019), Dr. Laura R. Barraclough tells a surprising story about the urban American West. Bar...
ListenSarah Eppler Janda, "Prairie Power: Student Activism, Counterculture, and Backlash in Oklahoma, 1962–1972" (U Oklahoma Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The sixties happened in Oklahoma too, argued Sarah Eppler Janda in Prairie Power: Student Activism, Counterculture, and Backlash in Oklahoma, 1962–1972(University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). While no...
ListenNick Estes, "Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The historian Nick Estes traces two centuries of Indigenous-led resistance and anti-colonial struggle. Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradi...
ListenHeather Mayer, "Beyond the Rebel Girl: Women and the Industrial Workers of the World in the Pacific Northwest, 1905-1924" (Oregon State UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Pacific Northwest was a hotbed of labor radicalism in the early twentieth century, where the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World (commonly known as the “Wobblies”) fought for better w...
ListenPeter Guardino, "The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War" (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Mexican-American War was one of the pivotal moments in 19th-century American history. It bridged the Jacksonian period and the Civil War era and was a highly controversial and politically parti...
ListenNoam Maggor, "Brahmin Capitalism: Frontiers of Wealth and Populism in America's First Gilded Age" (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tracking the movement of finance capital toward far-flung investment frontiers, Noam Maggor, Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, re-conceives the emergence of modern capitalism in the Unit...
ListenRosalyn LaPier, "Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet" (U Nebraska Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet(University of Nebraska Press, 2017), author Rosalyn LaPier, an associate professor in environmental stud...
ListenJacob Lee, "Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along the Mississippi" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
America’s waterways were once the superhighways of travel and communication. Coursing through a central line across the landscape, with tributaries connecting the South to the Great Plains and the ...
ListenMalcolm Rohrbough, “The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850” (Indiana UP, 2008) from 2008-01-26T02:39:22
Welcome to New Books in History. In this, our inaugural podcast, we’re honored to have Malcolm Rohrbough on the show. As many of you may know, Mac is a distinguished historian of the American West ...
ListenMalcolm Rohrbough, “The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850” (Indiana UP, 2008) from 2008-01-26T02:39:22
Welcome to New Books in History. In this, our inaugural podcast, we’re honored to have Malcolm Rohrbough on the show. As many of you may know, Mac is a distinguished historian of the American West ...
Listen