Best American West Podcasts (2024)

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

11d 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

13d 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

17d 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
Yolonda Youngs, "Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon" (U Nebraska Press, 2024) 1:05:41

21d 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
Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, "Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future" (The New Press, 2024) 32:41

21d 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
Iris Jamahl Dunkle, "Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb" (U California Press, 2024) 52:12

24d 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
Eric Steven Zimmer, "Red Earth Nation: A History of the Meskwaki Settlement" (U Oklahoma Press, 2024) 1:35:50

25d 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
Israel G. Solares, "Underground Leviathan: Corporate Sovereignty and Mining in the Americas" (U Nevada Press, 2024) 33:49

25d 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
Emily Carman, "Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System" (U Texas Press, 2016) 1:15:08

1M 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

1M 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

1M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

2M 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

3M 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

3M 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

3M 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

3M 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

3M 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

3M 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

3M 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

3M 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
Derek Taira, "Forward without Fear: Native Hawaiians and American Education in Territorial Hawai'i, 1900-1941" (U Nebraska Press, 2024) 52:17

3M 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
Justin B. Stein, "Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific" (U Hawaii Press, 2023) 56:56

3M 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
Steven Powell, "Love Me Fierce In Danger: The Life of James Ellroy" (Bloomsbury, 2023) 1:00:37

3M 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

3M 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
Jacob Lee, "Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along the Mississippi" (Harvard UP, 2019) 1:33:50

4M ago1:33:50

1:33:50

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 Great Lakes, the Mississippi River meant wealth, knowledge, and power for those who could master it. In Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and …

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

4M 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…

1
Alfred Peredo Flores, "Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962" (Cornell UP, 2023) 49:44

4M ago49:44

49:44

In Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962 (Cornell University Press, 2023), Dr. Alfred Peredo Flores argues that the US occupation of the island of Guåhan (Guam), one of the most heavily militarised islands in the western Pacific Ocean, was enabled by a process of settler militarism. During World War II and th…

1
William Gow, "Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community" (Stanford UP, 2024) 1:05:40

4M ago1:05:40

1:05:40

This episode features a conversation with Dr. William Gow on his recently published book, Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community (Stanford University Press, 2024), focuses on the 1930s and 1940s Los Angeles–its Chinatowns, and “city,” as well as the Chinese American community’s relationship with Hol…

1
Jake Johnson, "The Possibility Machine: Music and Myth in Las Vegas" (U Illinois Press, 2023) 57:38

4M ago57:38

57:38

Las Vegas is a place the American dream made; a city built in the middle of desert visited by millions of people every year hoping to make their dreams (big or small) come true. The essays in The Possibility Machine: Music and Myth in Las Vegas (University of Illinois Press, 2023) examines Las Vegas not as a kitschy, vaguely embarrassing American t…

1
Sigrid Schönfelder, "'Gold Fever' and Women: Transformations in Lives, Health Care and Medicine in the 19th Century American West" (Transcript, 2023) 45:09

4M ago45:09

45:09

Throughout its history, the American West symbolized a place of hope and new beginnings, where anything was possible, especially for men. However, the history written until the 1970s and 1980s excluded women. In 'Gold Fever' and Women: Transformations in Lives, Health Care and Medicine in the 19th Century American West (Transcript, 2023), Sigrid Sc…

1
Felicia Arriaga, "Behind Crimmigration: ICE, Law Enforcement, and Resistance in America" (UNC Press, 2023) 1:02:51

4M ago1:02:51

1:02:51

In recent years, dozens of counties in North Carolina have partnered with federal law enforcement in the criminalization of immigration--what many have dubbed "crimmigration." Southern border enforcement still monopolizes the national immigration debate, but immigration enforcement has become common within the United States as well. While Immigrati…

1
David H. Wilson, "Northern Paiutes of the Malheur: High Desert Reckoning in Oregon Country" (U Nebraska Press, 2022) 1:01:43

4M ago1:01:43

1:01:43

Between the mid-19th century and the start of the twentieth century, the Northern Paiute people of the Great Basin went from a self-sufficient tribe well-adapted to living on the harsh desert homelands, to a people singled out by the Native activist Henry Roe Cloud for their dire social and economic position. The story of how this happened is told …

1
Elsa Devienne, "Sand Rush: The Revival of the Beach in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles" (Oxford UP, 2024) 42:50

4M ago42:50

42:50

The Los Angeles shoreline is one of the most iconic natural landscapes in the United States, if not the world. The vast shores of Santa Monica, Venice, and Malibu are familiar sights to film and television audiences, conveying images of pristine sand, carefree fun, and glamorous physiques. Yet, in the early twentieth century Angelenos routinely lam…

1
Kathleen DuVal, "Native Nations: A Millennium in North America" (Random House, 2024) 58:18

4M ago58:18

58:18

In this sweeping new history, esteemed University of North Carolina historian Kathleen DuVal makes the case for the ongoing, ancient, and dynamic history of Native nationhood as a critical component of global history. In Native Nations: A Millennium in North America (Random House, 2024), DuVal covers a thousand years of continental history, buildin…

1
Alex V. Barnard, "Conservatorship: Inside California's System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness" (Columbia UP, 2023) 59:36

5M ago59:36

59:36

Is involuntary psychiatric treatment the solution to the intertwined crises of untreated mental illness, homelessness, and addiction? In recent years, politicians and advocates have sought to expand the use of conservatorships, a legal tool used to force someone deemed “gravely disabled,” or unable to meet their needs for food, clothing, or shelter…

1
Timothy G. Anderson and Brian Schoen, "Settling Ohio: First Peoples and Beyond" (Ohio UP, 2023) 36:02

5M ago36:02

36:02

Scholars working in archaeology, education, history, geography, and politics tell a nuanced story about the people and dynamics that reshaped this region and determined who would control it. The Ohio Valley possesses some of the most resource-rich terrain in the world. Its settlement by humans was thus consequential not only for shaping the geograp…

1
Tara López, "Chuco Punk: Sonic Insurgency in El Paso" (U Texas Press, 2024) 51:21

5M ago51:21

51:21

Tara López's Chuco Punk: Sonic Insurgency in El Paso (University of Texas Press, 2024), is an immersive study of the influential and predominantly Chicanx punk rock scene in El Paso, Texas. Punk rock is known for its daring subversion, and so is the West Texas city of El Paso. In Chuco Punk, Tara López dives into the rebellious sonic history of the…

1
Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans, "The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels" (Crown, 2024) 39:41

5M ago39:41

39:41

For centuries, people who died destitute or alone were buried in potters’ fields—a Dickensian end that even the most hard-pressed families tried to avoid. Today, more and more relatives are abandoning their dead, leaving it to local governments to dispose of the bodies. Up to 150,000 Americans now go unclaimed each year. Who are they? Why are they …

1
Omar Valerio-Jiménez, "Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory, and Citizenship" (UNC Press, 2024) 1:11:26

5M ago1:11:26

1:11:26

Omar Valerio-Jiménez's book Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory, and Citizenship (UNC Press, 2024) analyzes the ways collective memories of the US-Mexico War have shaped Mexican Americans' civil rights struggles over several generations. As the first Latinx people incorporated into the nation, Mexican Americans were offered US citizensh…

1
Danielle R. Olden, "Racial Uncertainties: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation, and the Making of Race in Post–Civil Rights America" (U California Press, 2022) 1:21:57

5M ago1:21:57

1:21:57

Mexican Americans have often fit uncertainly into the white/non-white binary that has goverens much of American history. After Colorado, and much of the rest of the American West, became American claimed territory after the Mexican-Americna War in 1848, thousands of formerly Mexican citizens became American citizens. Flash foward a century to post-…

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