New Books in the American West (2024)

28/06/2022

In 1885 Jane and Leland Stanford cofounded a university to honor their recently deceased young son. After her husband’s death in 1893, Jane Stanford, a devoted spiritualist who expected the university to inculcate her values, steered Stanford into eccentricity and public controversy for more than a decade. In 1905 she was murdered in Hawaii, a victim, according to the Honolulu coroner’s jury, of strychnine poisoning. With her vast fortune the university’s lifeline, the Stanford president and his allies quickly sought to foreclose challenges to her bequests by constructing a story of death by natural causes. The cover-up gained traction in the murky labyrinths of power, wealth, and corruption of Gilded Age San Francisco. The murderer walked.

Deftly sifting the scattered evidence and conflicting stories of suspects and witnesses, historian Richard White gives us the first full account of Jane Stanford’s murder and its cover-up in WHO KILLED JANE STANFORD?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University (W.W. Norton & Company). Against a backdrop of the city’s machine politics, rogue policing, tong wars, and heated newspaper rivalries, White’s search for the murderer draws us into Jane Stanford’s imperious household and the academic enmities of the university. Although Stanford officials claimed that no one could have wanted to murder Jane, we meet several people who had the motives and the opportunity to do so. One of these, we discover, also had the means. Author-interview podcast link ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/who-killed-jane-stanford-a-gilded-age-tale-of-murder-deceit-spirits-and-the-birth-of-a-university

22/06/2022

Over 20,000 residents of California were sterilized in the first half of the 20th century. A vast archive of the sterilization request records provides chilling evidence of the identities and family resources of these people. Furthermore, the documents explain why physicians and social workers deemed reproductive intervention to be in the interests of the state. Using the records from the Pacific Colony institution, Natalie Lira investigates why young women and men of Mexican origin were disproportionately detained, narrates their experiences of confinement and sterilization, and traces diverse strands testifying to widespread individual and familial resistance. In this conversation, Lira and Velázquez dig deeper into some of the themes addressed in Lira’s book, and reflect broadly on the cultural and racialist assumptions that fuel carceral and sterilization strategies a century ago and in the present day.

Learn more as Mirelsie Velázquez speaks with Natalie Lira about Lira’s recent book, LABORATORY of DEFICIENCY: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s (University of California Press) on the podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/laboratory-of-deficiency

14/06/2022

The air in Los Angeles can be lethal, and nobody knows this better than the city’s Latinx and Asian immigrants, argues Nadia Kim in REFUSING DEATH: Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA (Stanford University Press). Kim spent years interviewing environmental justice activists and other residents of LA’s most polluted neighborhoods to show the depths of environmental injustice in America’s second largest city, and how people in these places conceive of and engage in political action. REFUSING DEATH provides a depth of insight into how immigrant communities define themselves, protect their families, and organize to create a more just environment for themselves and for their children. Tune into the author-interview podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/refusing-death-immigrant-women-and-the-fight-for-environmental-justice-in-la

30/05/2022

The toxicity of pesticides to the environment and humans is often framed as an unfortunate effect of their benefits to agricultural production. In ECONOMIC POISONING: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture (University of California Press), Adam M. Romero upends this narrative and provides a fascinating new history of pesticides in American industrial agriculture prior to World War II. Through impeccable archival research, Romero reveals the ways in which late 19th- and early 20th-century American agriculture, especially in California, functioned less as a market for novel pest-killing chemical products and more as a sink for the accumulating toxic wastes of mining, oil production, and chemical manufacturing. Connecting farming ecosystems to technology and the economy, Romero provides an intriguing reconceptualization of pesticides that forces readers to rethink assumptions about food, industry, and the relationship between human and nonhuman environments. Check out the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/economic-poisoning

23/05/2022

Rivers host vibrant multispecies communities in their waters and along their banks, and, according to q***r-trans-feminist river scientist Cleo Wölfle Hazard, their future vitality requires centering the values of justice, sovereignty, and dynamism. At the intersection of river sciences, q***r and trans theory, and environmental justice, UNDERFLOWS: Q***r Trans Ecologies and River Justice (University of Washington Press) explores river cultures and politics at five sites of water conflict and restoration in California, Oregon, and Washington. Incorporating work with salmon, beaver, and floodplain recovery projects, Wölfle Hazard weaves narratives about innovative field research practices with an affectively oriented q***r and trans focus on love and grief for rivers and fish. Learn more on the podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/underflows

20/05/2022

In FRONTIER RELIGION: The Mormon-American Contest for the Meaning of America, 1857-1907 (The University of Utah Press), Konden Smith Hansen examines the dramatic influence these perceptions of the frontier had on Mormonism and other religions in America. Endeavoring to better understand the sway of the frontier on religion in the United States, this book follows several Mormon-American conflicts, from the Utah War and the antipolygamy crusades to the Reed Smoot hearings. The story of Mormonism’s move toward American acceptability represents a larger story of the nation’s transition to modernity and the meaning of religious pluralism. This book challenges old assumptions and provokes further study of the ever changing dialectic between society and faith. Learn more about it on the podcast 👇
https://newbooksnetwork.com/frontier-religion

06/05/2022

With a reputation as the hot-air balloon capital of the world and the home of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the southwestern desert city of Albuquerque frequently showcases the magic and adventure of ballooning. This legacy links back to the 1880s and a man by the name of Park Van Tassel. Through his pioneering flight, Van Tassel not only opened the skies to future generations across New Mexico, but he also opened minds to the possibility of manned flight throughout the American West.

A charismatic, P. T. Barnum–like showman, Van Tassel rose from obscurity to introduce the new science of ballooning and parachuting throughout the West. Learn more as Gary B. Fogel joins the podcast to discuss SKY RIDER: Park Van Tassel and the Rise of Ballooning in the West (University of New Mexico Press) ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/sky-rider

26/04/2022

"I don't care what people do in their bedroom, but do they need to flaunt it?" This sentiment is a common refrain in American culture and politics when talking about LGBTQ rights, and as historian Clayton Howard argues, it's a sentence with a history. In THE CLOSET and the CUL-DE-SAC: The Politics of S*xual Privacy in Northern California (University of Pennsylvania Press), Howard traces the history of the idea of s*xual privacy back to the era immediately after World War II, when the "Straight State" began more aggressively incentivizing and policing hetero- and homos*xuality respectively. Through acts such as the GI Bill, housing became a central battleground in the Bay Area for determining what normative s*x looked like. Soon, churches, schools, and the steps of city hall, all became fronts in a culture war that, as Howard argues, was not quite as black-and-white as scholars sometimes make it seem. Learn more on the podcast 🙃

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-closet-and-the-cul-de-sac

22/04/2022

Animals are both the focus of rodeo and its most invisible participants, historian Susan Nance in RODEO: An Animal History (University of Oklahoma Press). Nance flips the usual script on rodeo history, focusing on the experiences of animals in rodeo's long history. Often that history is one of animals struggling to survive in a world that requires them but does not tend to their particular needs and desires. In telling this story, Nance turns rodeo, a sport often described as a triumphant expression of Western ruggedness into a story of human imperfection and stubbornness. This book tells the story of several individual animals, famous horses such as War Paint and Greasy Sal, to show the hidden side of rodeo and the animals that built the industry into a Western cultural icon. Tune in as Nance joins us on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/rodeo

18/04/2022

Often overlooked, there is mixed blood at the heart of America. And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using intermarriage to link disparate communities and create protective circles of kin. Beginning in the 17th century, Native peoples—Ojibwes, Otoes, Cheyennes, Chinooks, and others—formed new families with young French, English, Canadian, and American fur traders who spent months in smoky winter lodges or at boisterous summer rendezvous. These families built cosmopolitan trade centers from Michilimackinac on the Great Lakes to Bellevue on the Missouri River, Bent’s Fort in the southern Plains, and Fort Vancouver in the Pacific Northwest.

Vividly combining the panoramic and the particular, BORN of LAKES and PLAINS: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West (W. W. Norton & Company) follows 5 mixed-descent families whose lives intertwined major events: imperial battles over the fur trade; the first extensions of American authority west of the Appalachians; the ravages of imported disease; the violence of Indian removal; encroaching American settlement; and, following the Civil War, the disasters of Indian war, reservations policy, and allotment. Learn more as Anne F. Hyde joins us on the podcast ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/born-of-lakes-and-plains

18/02/2022

Pundits, politicians, and scholars often use words like "liberalism" and "populism" uncritically. Gregg Cantrell argues that not only do these terms have specifically, historically contingent meanings, but also that one can draw a direct link from one to the other. In THE PEOPLE'S REVOLT: Texas Populists and the Roots of American Liberalism (Yale University Press), Cantrell explains how the populists weren't simply racist rural men, but instead had complicated ideologies and policy views, and an expansive worldview that serves as a forbearer to 20th and early 21st century liberalism. Delve deeper as Cantrell joins the New Books Network on the podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-peoples-revolt

17/12/2021

A vast and desolate region, the Texas-New Mexico borderlands have long been an ideal setting for intrigue and illegal dealings--never more so than in the lawless early days of cattle trafficking and trade among the Plains tribes and Comancheros. James Bailey Blackshear and Glen Sample Ely's CONFEDERATES and COMANCHEROS: Skullduggery and Double-Dealing in the Texas-New Mexico Borderlands (University of Oklahoma Press) takes us to the borderlands in the 1860s and 1870s for an in-depth look at Union-Confederate skullduggery amid the infamous Comanche-Comanchero trade in stolen Texas livestock. Learn more on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/confederates-and-comancheros

17/12/2021

Can a sea be a settler? What if it is a sea that exists only in the form of incongruous, head-scratching contradictions: a wetland in a desert, a wildlife refuge that poisons birds, a body of water in which fish suffocate? Traci Brynne Voyles's history of the Salton Sea examines how settler colonialism restructures physical environments in ways that further Indigenous dispossession, racial capitalism, and degradation of the natural world. In other words, THE SETTLER SEA: California's Salton Sea and the Consequences of Colonialism ( University of Nebraska Press) asks how settler colonialism entraps nature to do settlers' work for them. Check out the podcast ↙

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-settler-sea

25/11/2020

Focusing on extensive correspondence between Indigenous communities at over 30 western reservations, Justin Gage's new book, WE DO NOT WANT the GATES CLOSED between US: Native Networks and the Spread of the Ghost Dance (University of Oklahoma Press), shows how sustained communication between reservations enabled a diversity of peoples to share knowledge of common experiences under settler colonialism, culminating with the rise and rapid spread of the Ghost Dance. Gage joins Annabel LaBrecque ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/we-do-not-want-the-gates-closed-between-us

16/11/2020

Combining analysis of on-screen representations with research on both the production and political economy of Hollywood films,
A PIECE of the ACTION: Race and Labor in Post–Civil Rights Hollywood (Columbia University Press) explores the transitional years following the civil rights movement of the 1960s in order to chart the struggle by Black film makers for rights, recognition, and representation. Eithne Quinn discusses the book with the NBN's Dave O'Brien ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/a-piece-of-the-action

27/10/2020

After Laura Arata first visited Virginia City, Montana in graduate school, she became fascinated by the story of Sarah Bickford, a former slave who migrated to this frontier mining town and became a prominent business owner who promoted tourism at the site of a famous lynching of white “lawbreakers” by the Montana Vigilantes. In RACE and the WILD WEST: Sarah Bickford, the Montana Vigilantes, and the Tourism of Decline, 1870–1930 (University of Oklahoma Press), Arata provides a compelling biography of Bickford and the larger story of black life in the rural West. She joins us ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/laura-j-arata-race-and-the-wild-west-u-oklahoma-press-2020

26/10/2020

When gangsta rap hit the mainstream in the early 90s, the artform changed the face of pop music and American culture forever. 📕TO LIVE and DEFY in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America (Harvard University Press) describes how rap leapt across the continent from its New York roots in the mid-1980s and took hold in Los Angeles. Often gaining popularity by word of mouth and mobile DJ parties, local groups like NWA pioneered a new, harder-edged, style of hip hop music that reflected their experiences as youth growing up on the West Coast. Rap historian Felicia Angeja Viator joins Stephen Hausmann ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/felicia-angeja-viator-to-live-and-defy-in-la-how-gangsta-rap-changed-america-harvard-up-2020/

26/10/2020

In a wonderful mix of narrative storytelling and reportage, RADICAL RITUAL: How Burning Man Changed the World (Counterpoint) explains how Burning Man has impacted the art world, disaster relief, urban renewal, the utilization of renewable energy, and even the corporate governance of Google. Journalist, student of American culture, and 6-time Burning Man participant Neil Shister fills us in on the book 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/neil-shister-radical-ritual-how-burning-man-changed-the-world-counterpoint-2019/

23/10/2020

Using the concept of obligar, LOVE in the DRUG WAR: Selling S*x and Finding Jesus on the Mexico-US Border (University of Texas Press) explores the connections that tie s*x workers to their families, their clients, their pimps, missionaries and the drug dealers—and to the guilt, power, and comfort of faith. Delve deeper as Sarah Luna discusses her work with NBN host Alize Arican 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/sara-luna-love-in-the-drug-war-selling-s*x-and-finding-jesus-on-the-mexico-us-border-u-texas-press-2020/

30/09/2020

In 1800, tens of millions of bison roamed the North American Great Plains. By 1900, fewer than 1,000 remained.

Listen in as Andrew C. Isenberg sits down with Stephen Hausmann to discuss THE DESTRUCTION of the BISON: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (Cambridge University Press) and explain how this ecological calamity came to pass ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/andrew-c-isenberg-the-destruction-of-the-bison-an-environmental-history-1750-1920-cambridge-up-2000/

22/09/2020

Charting a passionate and tumultuous relationship that spanned decades, Sherry L. Smith’s BOHEMIANS WEST: Free Love, Family, and Radicals in Twentieth-Century America (Heyday Books) offers a deeply personal look at a dynamic period in American history. Find out about Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, two aspiring poets and political activists whose love story uncovers a potent emotional world underneath this transformative time, as Sherry L. Smith discusses the book with Ryan Tripp on the podcast ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/sherry-l-smith-bohemians-west-free-love-family-and-radicals-in-twentieth-century-america-heyday-books-2020/

22/09/2020

Focusing on Pueblos in New Mexico, Hopis in northern Arizona, and Tohono O’odhams and Yaquis in Arizona/Sonora, THESE PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN a REPUBLIC: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1598-1912 (University of North Carolina Press) reveals the ways Indigenous peoples absorbed and adapted colonially imposed forms of politics to exercise sovereignty based on localized political, economic, and social needs. Maurice S. Crandall discusses the book ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/maurice-s-crandall-these-people-have-always-been-a-republic-indigenous-electorates-in-the-u-s-mexico-borderlands-1598-1912-unc-press-2019/

11/09/2020

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 between various Apache groups and the Spanish Empire. In A BAD PEACE and a GOOD WAR: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799 (University of Oklahoma Press), Mark Santiago presents an alternate view: that sustained conflict was the norm in this region during the twilight of the Spanish Empire. He makes his case on the podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/mark-santiago-a-bad-peace-and-a-good-war-spain-and-the-mescalero-apache-uprising-of-1795-1799-u-oklahoma-press-2018/

21/08/2020

REDEFINING the IMMIGRANT SOUTH: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press) investigates how Indian and Pakistani immigrants forged an “interethnic” identity in Houston and located themselves—both socially and geographically—in the midst of a booming yet segregated Sunbelt city. Give author Uzma Quraishi's interview with Ian Shin a listen ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/uzma-quraishi-redefining-the-immigrant-south-unc-press-2020/

21/08/2020

Beginning in the 1870s, migrant groups from Russia’s steppes settled in the similar environment of the Great Plains. David Moon's new book, THE AMERICAN STEPPES: The Unexpected Russian Roots of Great Plains Agriculture, 1870s-1930s (Cambridge University Press) explores connections between these two regions. Check out Moon's conversation with Steven Seegel ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/david-moon-the-american-steppes-the-unexpected-russian-roots-of-great-plains-agriculture-1870s-1930s-cambridge-up-2020/

19/08/2020

The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was in many ways the crowning event of the 19th century. Held in Chicago, the metropolis of the West, and visited by tens of millions of people from around the world, it showcased America’s past, present, and future. And Indigenous people were there at center stage. In UNFAIR LABOR?: American Indians and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (University of Nebraska Press), David R. B. Beck addresses the question framed in the title: was the work done by Native people at the exposition fair? He discusses his research on the podcast ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/david-r-b-beck-unfair-labor-american-indians-and-the-1893-worlds-columbian-exposition-in-chicago-u-nebraska-press-2019/

18/08/2020

Debates about Ethnic Studies in K-12 and Higher Education have highlighted the importance of culturally inclusive pedagogy in schools. Despite discussions about Ethnic Studies, there is a more extended history of Mexican-origin people pushing for culturally responsive education. In READING, WRITING , and REVOLUTION: Escuelitas and the Emergence of a Mexican American Identity in Texas (University of Texas Press), Philis M. Barragán-Goetz argues that through cultural negotiation, escuelitas (community schools) shaped Mexican American identity and civil rights activism in the late 19th and early 20th century. She joins Tiffany Gonzalez ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/philis-barragan-goetz-reading-writing-and-revolution-escuelitas-and-the-emergence-of-a-mexican-american-identity-in-texas-u-texas-press-2020/

10/07/2020

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 B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater, Nancy Beck Young’s TWO SUNS of the SOUTHWEST: Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, and the 1964 Battle between Liberalism and Conservatism (University Press of Kansas) is the first comprehensive political history of the 1964 election. Listen in 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/nancy-beck-young-two-suns-of-the-southwest-u-kansas-press-2019/

06/06/2020

For decades unhoused populations have lived in camps or other makeshift settings, even when shelters are available. Is this a chosen act of resistance? Is it an act of self-preservation?

HOBO JUNGLE: A Homeless Community in Paradise (Lynne Rienner Publishers) is an evocative portrait of a jungle encampment that has endured since the Great Depression in one of the wealthiest cities located on California’s south coast. Listen in as Michele Wakin joins Michael O. Johnston on the podcast👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/michele-wakin-hobo-jungle-a-homeless-community-in-paradise-lynne-rienner-2020/

21/05/2020

Environmental historian Adam M. Sowards joins us to discuss AN OPEN PIT VISIBLE from the MOON: The Wilderness Act and the Fight to Protect Miners Ridge and the Public Interest (University of Oklahoma Press), his new book that describes what happened when a major copper corporation tried to establish a massive mine in Washington state and how ordinary citizens banded together to achieve what the law could not to save Miners Ridge. Listen in ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/adam-m-sowards-an-open-pit-visible-from-the-moon-u-oklahoma-press-2020/

New Books in the American West

28/06/2022

22/06/2022

14/06/2022

30/05/2022

23/05/2022

20/05/2022

06/05/2022

26/04/2022

22/04/2022

18/04/2022

18/02/2022

17/12/2021

17/12/2021

25/11/2020

16/11/2020

27/10/2020

26/10/2020

26/10/2020

23/10/2020

30/09/2020

22/09/2020

22/09/2020

11/09/2020

21/08/2020

21/08/2020

19/08/2020

18/08/2020

10/07/2020

06/06/2020

21/05/2020

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