Parhaat American West Podcastit (2025)

1
Farina King, "Diné dóó Gáamalii: Navajo Latter-day Saint Experiences in the Twentieth Century" (UP of Kansas, 2023) 54:41

6d ago54:41

54:41

In this deeply personal account, University of Oklahoma associate professor of Native American Studies Dr. Farina King describes the history and present of Diné dóó Gáamalii, Navajo people who, in her words, "walk a Latter-day Saints pathway." The book, Diné dóó Gáamalii: Navajo Latter-day Saint Experiences in the Twentieth Century (UP of Kansas, 2…

1
Scott Huver, "Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210" (Post Hill Press, 2024) 52:30

10d ago52:30

52:30

Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210 (Post Hill Press, 2024) explores the city’s true crime history, delving deep inside cases that made headlines, scandals that engulfed Hollywood legends, and more strange-but-true tales that could only happen in the 90210. Beverly Hills Noir chronicles an assortment of jaw-dropping true crime storie…

1
Linda M. Clemmons, "Unrepentant Dakota Woman: Angelique Renville & the Struggle for Indigenous Identity, 1845-1876" (SDHS Press, 2023) 57:25

10d ago57:25

57:25

For much of her life, Angelique Renville had decisions made for her. Where to live, who to live with, where to attend school, what to do with her land. That changed in 1863 when she made a plan and successfully hatched her plan to escape, living the end of her life on her own terms. This is the story Dr. Linda Clemmons tells in Unrepentant Dakota W…

1
Justin Tse, "Sheets of Scattered Sand: Cantonese Protestants and the Secular Dream of the Pacific Rim" (U Notre Dame Press, 2024) 1:35:00

14d ago1:35:00

1:35:00

Justin K.H. Tse captures the voices of Cantonese Protestant Christians from the San Francisco, Vancouver, and Hong Kong metropolitan areas as they reflect on their efforts to adapt to secular communities while retaining their identity and beliefs. In the context of the transpacific region between Asia and the Americas, the “Pacific Rim” refers to a…

1
Tom Clavin, "Bandit Heaven: The Hole-in-the-Wall Gangs and the Final Chapter of the Wild West" (St. Martin's Press, 2024) 44:08

15d ago44:08

44:08

From multiple New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin comes the thrilling true story of the most infamous hangout for bandits, thieves and murderers of all time―and the lawmen tasked with rooting them out. Robbers Roost, Brown’s Hole, and Hole-in-the-Wall were three hideouts that collectively were known to outlaws as “Bandit Heaven.” During th…

1
Oliver Rosales, "Civil Rights in Bakersfield: Segregation and Multiracial Activism in the Central Valley" (U Texas Press, 2024) 1:10:45

18d ago1:10:45

1:10:45

In Civil Rights in Bakersfield: Segregation and Multiracial Activism in the Central Valley (University of Texas Press, 2024), Oliver Rosales uncovers the role of the multiracial west in shaping the course of US civil rights history. Focusing on Bakersfield, one of the few sizable cities within California’s Central Valley for much of the twentieth c…

1
Holly M. Karibo, "Rehab on the Range: A History of Addiction and Incarceration in the American West" (U Texas Press, 2024) 46:28

21d ago46:28

46:28

In 1929, the United States government approved two ground-breaking and controversial drug addiction treatment programs. At a time when fears about a supposed rise in drug use reached a fevered pitch, the emergence of the nation’s first “narcotic farms” in Fort Worth, Texas, and Lexington, Kentucky, marked a watershed moment in the treatment of addi…

1
Matthew Gardner Kelly, "Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity" (Cornell UP, 2024) 1:20:14

28d ago1:20:14

1:20:14

In Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity (Cornell UP, 2024), Matthew Gardner Kelly takes aim at the racial and economic disparities that characterize public education funding in the United States. With California as his focus, Kelly illustrates that the use of local taxes to fund public education was never an i…

1
Olivia Chilcote, "Unrecognized in California: Federal Acknowledgment and the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians" (U Washington Press, 2024) 1:23:54

1M ago1:23:54

1:23:54

California has more unrecognized Native tribes than any other state - what led to this strange state of affairs, and what does this mean in practice? In Unrecognized in California: Federal Acknowledgment and the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians (U Washington Press, 2024), San Diego State associate professor Olivia Chilcote answers these questio…

1
Maria Angela Diaz, "A Continuous State of War: Empire Building and Race Making in the Civil War–Era Gulf South" (U Georgia Press, 2024) 51:39

1M ago51:39

51:39

From 1845 to 1865 the Gulf of Mexico was at the center of American expansion and southern imperialism. A Continuous State of War: Empire Building and Race Making in the Civil War–Era Gulf South (University of Georgia Press, 2024) by Dr. Maria Angela Diaz tells the story of several communities, such as Galveston, New Orleans, and Pensacola, as well …

1
Disabled Ecologies: Lessons From a Wounded Desert 1:09:09

1M ago1:09:09

1:09:09

Deep below the ground in Tucson, Arizona, lies an aquifer forever altered by the detritus of a postwar Superfund site. Disabled Ecologies: Lessons From a Wounded Desert (U California Press, 2024) by Dr. Sunaura Taylor, tells the story of this contamination and its ripple effects through the largely Mexican-American community living above. Drawing o…

1
W. Paul Reeve, et al., "This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah" (Oxford UP, 2024) 57:26

1M ago57:26

57:26

On July 22, 1847, a group of about forty refugees entered the Salt Lake Valley. Among them were three enslaved men, two of whom shared the religion, Mormonism, that had caused them to flee. The valley was also home to members of the Ute tribe, who would sometimes barter captive women and children to Spanish colonizers. Thus, the question of whether…

1
Timothy E. Nelson, "Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier, 1900-1930" (Texas Tech UP, 2023) 54:11

1M ago54:11

54:11

By most accounts, Blackdom, New Mexico existed from 1900-1930. However, as historian and artist Dr. Timothy Nelson argues in his new book, the Black colony founded in the then-territory of New Mexico has a much longer history and many afterlives, even after the residents moved away. In Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier, 19…

1
Without Parents or Papers: A Discussion with Stephanie L. Canizales 45:27

1M ago45:27

45:27

Today’s book is: Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States (U California Press, 2024), a which explores how each year, thousands of youth endure harrowing unaccompanied and undocumented migrations across Central America and Mexico to the United States in pursuit of a better future. Drawing on the firstha…

1
Andrew Stone Higgins, "Higher Education for All: Racial Inequality, Cold War Liberalism, and the California Master Plan" (UNC Press, 2023) 1:03:30

1M ago1:03:30

1:03:30

The 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education remains to this day the largest and most ambitious attempt to provide free, universal college education in the United States. Yet the Master Plan, the product of committed Cold War liberals, unfortunately served to reinforce the very class-based exclusions and de facto racism that plagued K–12 ed…

1
Michael J. Alarid, "Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny, 1837-1860" (U New Mexico Press, 2022) 42:14

2M ago42:14

42:14

In Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny, 1837-1860 (University of New Mexico Press, 2023), historian Dr. Michael J. Alarid examines New Mexico's transition from Spanish to Mexican to US control during the nineteenth century and illuminates how emerging class differences played a crucial role in the regime change. After …

1
Reunited: Family Separation and Central American Youth Migration 1:06:56

3M ago1:06:56

1:06:56

Today’s book is: Reunited: Family Separation and Central American Youth Migration (Russell Sage Foundation, 2024), by Dr. Ernesto Castañeda and Daniel Jenks, which explains the reasons for Central American youth migration, describes the journey, and documents how minors experienced separation from their families and their subsequent reunification. …

1
Elizabeth Korver-Glenn and Sarah Mayorga, "A Good Reputation: How Residents Fight for an American Barrio" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:01:21

3M ago1:01:21

1:01:21

Neighborhoods have the power to form significant parts of our worlds and identities. A neighborhood's reputation, however, doesn't always match up to how residents see themselves or wish to be seen. The distance between residents' desires and their environment can profoundly shape neighborhood life. In A Good Reputation: How Residents Fight for an …

1
Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, "Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future" (The New Press, 2024) 32:41

3M ago32:41

32:41

A clarion call for justice in the quest for clean energy California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions in the country. Recently, however, it has also become ground zero in the new “lithium gold rush”—the race to power the rapidly expanding electric vehicle and renewable energy storage market. The immens…

1
Yolonda Youngs, "Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon" (U Nebraska Press, 2024) 1:05:41

3M ago1:05:41

1:05:41

Perhaps no American landscape is as iconic as the rainbow rocks of Arizona's Grand Canyon. Yet, as the geographer Yolonda Youngs argues, the Grand Canyon many people think they know is but one sliver of the story of the wider Grand Canyon as a historical and physical place. In Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon (U …

1
Iris Jamahl Dunkle, "Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb" (U California Press, 2024) 52:12

3M ago52:12

52:12

In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collective imagination of the era. But it also stopped the publication of another important novel, silencing a gifted writer who was more intimately connected to the true experiences of Dust Bowl migrants. In …

1
Israel G. Solares, "Underground Leviathan: Corporate Sovereignty and Mining in the Americas" (U Nevada Press, 2024) 33:49

3M ago33:49

33:49

Underground Leviathan: Corporate Sovereignty and Mining in the Americas (U Nevada Press, 2024) explores the emergence, dynamics, and lasting impacts of a mining firm, the United States Company. Through its exercise of sovereign power across the borders of North America in the early twentieth century, the transnational US Company shaped the business…

1
Eric Steven Zimmer, "Red Earth Nation: A History of the Meskwaki Settlement" (U Oklahoma Press, 2024) 1:35:50

3M ago1:35:50

1:35:50

In 1857, the Meskwaki Nation began the long process of piecing their homelands back together. After decades of war, dispossession, and removal at the hands of the American government and American settlers, the Meskwaki, bit by bit, purchase by purchase, started to reestablish a land base along the banks of the Iowa River, more than a century and a …

1
Emily Carman, "Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System" (U Texas Press, 2016) 1:15:08

3M ago1:15:08

1:15:08

During the heyday of Hollywood’s studio system, stars were carefully cultivated and promoted, but at the price of their independence. This familiar narrative of Hollywood stardom receives a long-overdue shakeup in Emily Carman’s new book. Far from passive victims of coercive seven-year contracts, a number of classic Hollywood’s best-known actresses…

1
Amir Alexander, "Liberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:00:11

3M ago1:00:11

1:00:11

Seen from an airplane, much of the United States appears to be a gridded land of startling uniformity. Perpendicular streets and rectangular fields, all precisely measured and perfectly aligned, turn both urban and rural America into a checkerboard landscape that stretches from horizon to horizon. In evidence throughout the country, but especially …

1
Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions 1:08:46

3M ago1:08:46

1:08:46

Today’s book is: Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions (Columbia UP, 2024), by Ernesto Castaneda and Carina Cione, which is a practical, evidence-based primer on immigrants and immigration. Each chapter debunks a frequently encountered claim and answers common questions. Presenting the latest findings and decades of interdiscipli…

1
Paul Peart-Smith, "Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation" (Beacon Press, 2024) 1:18:28

4M ago1:18:28

1:18:28

As the author of a graphic history, I loved chatting with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Paul Peart-Smith about the graphic interpretation of An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2024). An Indigenous Peoples' History of The United States originally came out in 2014 with Beacon Press. In 2019 it was adapted into a Young Peopl…

1
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, "When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s" (UP of Kansas, 2022) 48:57

4M ago48:57

48:57

Unlike a flood or fire, a the Farming Crisis of the 1980s did not have a set beginning of ending. Rather, it was a rolling, often invisible, disaster that could be easy to ignore if you lived in towns or cities, even within the West and Midwest. Yet, in places like rural Iowa, the impacts of this complex crisis were devastating and indeed, ongoing …

1
Jess Whatcott, "Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:00:22

4M ago1:00:22

1:00:22

In Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics (Duke UP, 2024), Jess Whatcott traces the link between US disability institutions and early twentieth-century eugenicist ideology, demonstrating how the legacy of those ideas continues to shape incarceration and detention today. Whatcott focuses on California, examining re…

1
Sarah Miller-Davenport, "Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019) 59:12

4M ago59:12

59:12

One of my talking points when hanging out with my fellow diplomatic historians is the painful absence of scholarship on Hawaii. Too many political histories treat Hawaii’s statehood as a kind of historical inevitability, an event that was bound to pass the moment the kingdom was annexed. As I would frequently pontificate, “nobody has unpacked the i…

1
Steven Watts, "Citizen Cowboy: Will Rogers and the American People" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 38:13

4M ago38:13

38:13

Citizen Cowboy: Will Rogers and the American People (Cambridge UP, 2024) is a probing biography of one of America's most influential cultural figures. Will Rogers was a youth from the Cherokee Indian Territory of Oklahoma who rose to conquer nearly every form of media and entertainment in the early twentieth century's rapidly expanding consumer soc…

1
Holly Miowak Guise, "Alaska Native Resilience: Voices from World War II" (U Washington Press, 2024) 1:09:09

4M ago1:09:09

1:09:09

The Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands during World War II changed Alaska, serving as justification for a large American military presence across the peninsula and advancing colonialism into the territory in the years before statehood. In Alaska Native Resilience: Voices from World War II (U Washington Press, 2024), University of New Mexico …

1
James Barrera, "'We Want Better Education!': The 1960s Chicano Student Movement, School Walkouts, and the Quest for Educational Reform in South Texas" (Texas A&M UP, 2023) 55:47

4M ago55:47

55:47

In 'We Want Better Education!': The 1960s Chicano Student Movement, School Walkouts, and the Quest for Educational Reform in South Texas (Texas A&M UP, 2023), James B. Barrera offers a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the educational, cultural, and political issues of the Chicano Movement in Texas, which remains one of the lesser-known social…

1
Damaging Rationality: Exxon-Funded Legal Research and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill 1:13:50

4M ago1:13:50

1:13:50

This is part #3 of a the (ir)Rational Alaskans, a Cited Podcast mini-series that re-examines the legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In the last episode of the (ir)Rational Alaskans, Riki Ott, Linden O’Toole, and thousands of other Alaskan fishers won over $5 billion in punitive damages against Exxon for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In our finale,…

1
Douglas K. Miller, "Indians on the Move: Native American Mobility and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century" (UNC Press, 2019) 1:43:20

4M ago1:43:20

1:43:20

In 1972, the Bureau of Indian Affairs terminated its twenty-year-old Voluntary Relocation Program, which encouraged the mass migration of roughly 100,000 Native American people from rural to urban areas. At the time the program ended, many groups--from government leaders to Red Power activists--had already classified it as a failure, and scholars h…

1
Wesley G. Phelps, "Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement" (U Texas Press, 2023) 1:00:23

4M ago1:00:23

1:00:23

In 2003, in a ruling that bordered on poetic, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in Lawrence v. Texas that sexual behavior between consenting adults was protected under the constitutional right to privacy. This was a landmark case in the course of LGBTQ+ rights in the Untied States, laying the groundwork for cases like 2015's Obergefell v.…

1
Stephanie L Canizales, "Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States" (U California Press, 2024) 1:04:50

5M ago1:04:50

1:04:50

Each year, thousands of youth endure harrowing unaccompanied and undocumented migrations across Central America and Mexico to the United States in pursuit of a better future. Drawing on the firsthand narratives of migrant youth in Los Angeles, California to produce Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United Stat…

1
12 Angry Alaskans: Re-Examining the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Case 1:12:30

5M ago1:12:30

1:12:30

This is part #2 of a the (ir)Rational Alaskans, a Cited Podcast series that re-examines the legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Last episode, the spill devastates Cordova, Alaska. In this second part, 12 Angry Alaskans, a jury of ordinary Alaskans picks up our story. They muddle through the most devastating, and most complicated, environmental di…

1
Alonso Duralde, "Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film" (Running Press Adult, 2024) 59:40

5M ago59:40

59:40

Film critic Alonso Duralde and I talk his new book, Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film (Running Press, 2024), including some fascinating anecdotes, case studies, and watershed moments in queer cinematic history, not to mention its creators, its stars, its detractors, and its various ebbs and flows -- fr…

1
Ana Raquel Minian, “Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration” (Harvard UP, 2018) 1:05:35

5M ago1:05:35

1:05:35

In the 1970s, the Mexican government acted to alleviate rural unemployment by supporting the migration of able-bodied men. Millions crossed into the United States to find work that would help them survive as well as sustain their families in Mexico. They took low-level positions that few Americans wanted and sent money back to communities that depe…

1
Zoë Bossiere, "Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir" (Abrams Press, 2024) 53:29

5M ago53:29

53:29

Today, I interview Zoë Bossiere about Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir (Abrams Press, 2024). Bossiere is writer from Tucson, Arizona. They are the managing editor of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, as well as the coeditor of two anthologies: The Best of Brevity and The Lyric Essay as Resistance. Today, we talk about their debut m…

1
Eric Hoyt, "Ink-Stained Hollywood: The Triumph of American Cinema’s Trade Press" (U California Press, 2022) 1:11:29

5M ago1:11:29

1:11:29

For the first half of the twentieth century, no American industry boasted a more motley and prolific trade press than the movie business—a cutthroat landscape that set the stage for battle by ink. In 1930, Martin Quigley, publisher of Exhibitors Herald, conspired with Hollywood studios to eliminate all competing trade papers, yet this attempt and e…

1
Tore C. Olsson, "Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past" (St. Martin's Press, 2024) 1:15:43

5M ago1:15:43

1:15:43

Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II, set in 1911 and 1899, are the most-played American history video games since The Oregon Trail. Beloved by millions, they’ve been widely acclaimed for their realism and attention to detail. But how do they fare as re-creations of history? In Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's…

1
Yiman Wang, "To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World" (U California Press, 2024) 1:00:16

5M ago1:00:16

1:00:16

Between 1919 and 1961, pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong established an enduring legacy that encompassed cinema, theatre, radio, and American television. Born in Los Angeles, yet with her US citizenship scrutinised due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong—a defiant misfit—innovated nuanced performances to subvert the racism and sexism…

1
Stephen J. Pyne, "Pyrocene Park: A Journey Into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park" (U Arizona Press, 2023) 1:09:37

5M ago1:09:37

1:09:37

How is Yosemite National Park a microcosm for our warming, fire-driven, world? Arizona State University emeritus professor Stephen Pyne answers that question in Pyrocene Park: A Journey Into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park (U Arizona Press, 2023). Pyne frames the fire history of Yosemite National Park around a three day hike he and a tea…

1
Justin B. Stein, "Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific" (U Hawaii Press, 2023) 56:56

5M ago56:56

56:56

In the second half of the twentieth century, Reiki went from an obscure therapy practiced by a few thousand Japanese and Japanese Americans to a global phenomenon. By the early twenty-first century, people in nearly every corner of the world have undergone the initiations that authorize them to channel a cosmic energy—known as Reiki—to heal body, m…

1
Derek Taira, "Forward without Fear: Native Hawaiians and American Education in Territorial Hawai'i, 1900-1941" (U Nebraska Press, 2024) 52:17

5M ago52:17

52:17

During Hawai‘i’s territorial period (1900–1959), Native Hawaiians resisted assimilation by refusing to replace Native culture, identity, and history with those of the United States. By actively participating in U.S. public schools, Hawaiians resisted the suppression of their language and culture, subjection to a foreign curriculum, and denial of th…

1
Steven Powell, "Love Me Fierce In Danger: The Life of James Ellroy" (Bloomsbury, 2023) 1:00:37

5M ago1:00:37

1:00:37

Love Me Fierce In Danger: The Life of James Ellroy (Bloomsbury, 2023) is the story of James Ellroy, one of the most provocative and singular figures in American literature. The so-called “Demon Dog of Crime Fiction,” Ellroy enjoys a celebrity status and notoriety that few authors can match. However, traumas from the past have shadowed his literary …

1
Pekka Hämäläinen, "Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power" (Yale UP, 2019) 40:02

6M ago40:02

40:02

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 figures were created - remains largely untold. In Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power (Yale, 2019), historian Pekka Hämäläinen, author of The C…

1
James Mallery, "City of Vice: Transience and San Francisco's Urban History, 1848-1917" (U Nebraska Press, 2024) 1:05:11

6M ago1:05:11

1:05:11

San Francisco began its American life as a city largely made up of transient men, arriving from afar to participate in the gold rush and various attendant enterprises. This large population of men on the move made the new and booming city a hub of what "respectable" easterners considered vice: drinking, gambling, and sex work, among other activitie…

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