New Books In The American West

The history of race in American theater is more complicated than you might think, writes Dr. Josephine Lee in Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater (UNC Press, 2022). Dr. Lee, a professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota, examines the linked histories of orientalism, Blackface and Yellowface, in nineteenth and early twentieth century American theater, showing how identity creation and racialization occurred among multiple groups simultaneously. Within the context of large scale East Asian immigration to the West coast, labor debates, and American empire building. Theaters, both on the East and West coasts, and touring Black and white theater companies, thus both reflected and shaped American ideas about race and belonging throughout this time period. A fascinating and complex look at how Americans tried to make sense of their world, Lee asks readers to look beyond easy answers and assumptions, and look at American theater in a new wa

The past decades have borne witness to the United Farm Workers' (UFW) tenacious hold on the country's imagination. Since 2008, the UFW has lent its rallying cry to a presidential campaign and been the subject of no less than nine books, two documentaries, and one motion picture. Yet the full story of the women, men, and children who powered this social movement has not yet been told. Based on more than 200 hours of original oral history interviews conducted with Coachella Valley residents who participated in the UFW and Chicana/o movements, as well as previously unused oral history collections of Filipino farm workers, bracero workers, and UFW volunteers throughout the United States, The Strikers of Coachella: A Rank-And-File History of the UFW Movement (UNC Press, 2023) spans from the 1960s and 1970s through the union's decline in the early 1980s. Christian O. Paiz refocuses attention on the struggle inherent in organizing a particularly vulnerable labor force, especially during a period that saw the hollowi

One of the oldest and most recognizable studios in Hollywood, Warner Bros. is considered a juggernaut of the entertainment industry. Since its formation in the early twentieth century, the studio has been a constant presence in cinema history, responsible for the creation of acclaimed films, blockbuster brands, and iconic superstars. In The Warner Brothers (UP of Kentucky, 2023), Chris Yogerst follows the siblings from their family's humble origins in Poland, through their young adulthood in the American Midwest, to the height of fame and fortune in Hollywood. With unwavering resolve, the brothers soldiered on against the backdrop of an America reeling from the aftereffects of domestic and global conflict. The Great Depression would not sink the brothers, who churned out competitive films that engaged audiences and kept their operations afloat―and even expanding. During World War II, they used their platform to push beyond the limits of the Production Code and create important films about real-world issues, o

Fernando Valenzuela was only twenty years old when Tom Lasorda chose him as the Dodgers' opening-day starting pitcher in 1981. Born in the remote Mexican town of Etchohuaquila, the left-hander had moved to the United States less than two years before. He became an instant icon, and his superlative rookie season produced Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards--and a World Series victory over the Yankees. Forty years later, there hasn't been a player since who created as many Dodgers fans. After the Dodgers' move to Los Angeles from Brooklyn in the late 1950s, relations were badly strained between the organization and the Latin world. Mexican Americans had been evicted from their homes in Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles--some forcibly--for well below market value so the city could sell the land to team owner Walter O'Malley for a new stadium. For a generation of working-class Mexican Americans, the Dodgers became a source of great anguish over the next two decades. However, that bitterness toward the Dodgers vanishe

Because immigration is such a recurring-and divisive-topic in the United States, it is easy to assume that we understand what it means for an immigrant to live under the specter of surveillance and punishment. It is easy to assume, as many scholars and journalists do, that undocumented immigrants live on the run from the authorities, constantly fleeing to the margins of daily life, staying in the shadows beneath the eyes of the law. And yet, while it is certainly true that immigrants are constantly faced with mechanisms of surveillance that function as tools of societal exclusion, this only tells part of the story.  In Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life (Princeton UP, 2023), Asad L. Asad show, many people with a sanctionable status cannot-and, in some cases, do not want to-evade surveilling institutions or the formal records they generate: evading the institutions that keep formal records is a luxury that most immigrants (especially those with children) cannot

As the enduring "last frontier," Alaska proves an indispensable context for examining the form and function of American colonialism, particularly in the shift from western continental expansion to global empire. In this richly theorized work, Juliana Hu Pegues evaluates four key historical periods in U.S.-Alaskan history: the Alaskan purchase, the Gold Rush, the emergence of salmon canneries, and the World War II era. In each, Hu Pegues recognizes colonial and racial entanglements between Alaska Native peoples and Asian immigrants. In the midst of this complex interplay, the American colonial project advanced by differentially racializing and gendering Indigenous and Asian peoples, constructing Asian immigrants as "out of place" and Alaska Natives as "out of time." Counter to this space-time colonialism, Native and Asian peoples created alternate modes of meaning and belonging through their literature, photography, political organizing, and sociality. Offering an intersectional approach to U.S. empire, Indige

On September 11, 1857, a small band of Mormons led by John D. Lee massacred an emigrant train of men, women, and children heading west at Mountain Meadows, Utah. News of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, as it became known, sent shockwaves through the western frontier of the United States, reaching the nation's capital and eventually crossing the Atlantic. In the years prior to the massacre, Americans dubbed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the "Mormon problem" as it garnered national attention for its "unusual" theocracy and practice of polygamy. In the aftermath of the massacre, many Americans viewed Mormonism as a real religious and physical threat to white civilization. Putting the Mormon Church on trial for its crimes against American purity became more important than prosecuting those responsible for the slaughter. In Convicting the Mormons: The Mountain Meadows Massacre in American Culture (UNC Press, 2023), religious historian Janiece Johnson analyzes how sensational media attention used t

In Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods (Little, Brown Spark, 2022), Lyndsie Bourgon takes us deep into the underbelly of the illegal timber market. As she traces three timber poaching cases, she introduces us to tree poachers, law enforcement, forensic wood specialists, the enigmatic residents of former logging communities, environmental activists, international timber cartels, and indigenous communities along the way. Old-growth trees are invaluable and irreplaceable for both humans and wildlife, and are the oldest living things on earth. But the morality of tree poaching is not as simple as we might think: stealing trees is a form of deeply rooted protest, and a side effect of environmental preservation and protection that doesn't include communities that have been uprooted or marginalized when park boundaries are drawn. As Bourgon discovers, failing to include working class and rural communities in the preservation of these awe-inducing ecosystems can lead to catastrophic results. Fea

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Michael R. Jin regarding his recently published book Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: The Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific. Published in November 2021 by Stanford University Press, the book weaves together Jin’s specializations in migration and diaspora studies, Asian American history, critical race and ethnic studies, and the history of the American West to examine the “highly mobile transpacific diaspora” of roughly 50,000 Nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans, moving between the Japanese empire and the American West. The book traverses these deeply intertwined histories of Asian exclusion, colonialism in Asia, and volatile geopolitical changes regarding citizenship and migration in the Asia-Pacific during the twentieth century. Pulling from transnational and bilingual research in the United States and Japan, Jin’s contributions in Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless push the spatial boundaries of Asian American studies by illustrat

The history of the American West has typically been told in one of two ways: as triumph, or as tragedy. Stephen Aron, accomplished scholar of the West, Professor Emeritus at UCLA, and President of the Autry Museum of the American West, argues that both of these narratives flatten out what was actually a much more complicated story.  Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West (Oxford UP, 2022), Aron zooms in on several moments of contingency in the Western past, moments when people of often radically different backgrounds came together to build community, or at least lived peacefully, despite their differences. Although these moments eventually fell apart, Aron argues that they show that the past was unwritten until it came to pass, and that our own uncertain future is the same. Peace and Friendship offers important lessons about the power of history and contingency, and underscores the unsettled nature of human events and our capacity for overcoming even our deepest differences. Learn m

The Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River provides electricity for some forty million people, and is one of the largest sources of water in the American West. It is also a testament to American settler colonialism, writes UT Austin history professor Erika Bsumek in The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau (U Texas Press, 2023). This region of the Southwest has been inhabited and irrigated by Indigenous societies since time immemorial, groups which were only recently (and partially) dispossessed by LDS Church settlers and by the US government. Bsumek argues that the structures, both physical and social, which form the foundation of Glen Canyon Dam - including science, law, and religion - make it a blueprint for structural dispossession, and a model which the United States would use to claim valuable Native lands. Yet, a mammoth undertaking such as this cannot be built without massive environmental change, and from the very beginning, both Indigenous and non-I

Today’s book is: Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult, published by Algonquin Books, and written by Michelle Dowd. Forager is a memoir which showcases Michelle’s life growing up on an isolated mountain in California as part of an apocalyptic cult, and how she found her way out of poverty and illness by drawing on the gifts of the wilderness. Our guest is: Michelle Dowd, who is a journalism professor and contributor to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The LA Book Review, TIME Magazine, The Alpinist, ORION, LA Parent Mag, Catapult, and other publications. She was 2022 Faculty Lecturer of the Year at Chaffey College, where she founded the award-winning literary journal The Chaffey Review, advises Student Media, and teaches poetry and critical thinking in the California Institutions for Men and Women in Chino. She was a Longreads Top 5 for her article on the relationship between environmentalism and hope in The Alpinist, nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and her Modern Love column in T

At the end of the 1930s, the West was in peril. A cultural and economic backwater, the Great Depression had all-but wiped out the extractive industries which had fueled the region's economy for decades. What catapulted the West into the global twentieth century was mobilization for World War II.  In The Mobilized American West: 1940-2000 (U Nebraska Press, 2023), University of Washington emeritus professor John Findlay argues that once began, that mobilization never really ended, and continues to define the West to this day. As the latest entry in Nebraska's lauded History of the American West series, Findlay uses the latest scholarship to offer a synthetic look at the recent history of the West, a period that often gets short shrift in Western historiography. Findlay also takes new approaches, looking at the West through the lenses of family history and political culture, to make the case that the region is still distinct and worthy of study as a unique place. Findlay's West is a place of violence, democracy

Scott A. Mitchell is the Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs and holds the Yoshitaka Tamai Professorial Chair at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley. He teaches and writes about Buddhism in the West, Pure Land Buddhism, and Buddhist modernism. As of 2010, there were approximately 3-4 million Buddhists in the United States, and that figure is expected to grow significantly. Beyond the numbers, the influence of Buddhism can be felt throughout the culture, with many more people practicing meditation, for example, than claiming Buddhist identity. A century ago, this would have been unthinkable. So how did Buddhism come to claim such a significant place in the American cultural landscape? The Making of American Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2023) offers an answer, showing how in the years on either side of World War II second-generation Japanese American Buddhists laid claim to an American identity inclusive of their religious identity. In the process they-and their allies-created a place for Buddhism in America

In Becoming Colorado: The Centennial State in 100 Objects (UP of Colorado, 2021), historian William Wei paints a vivid portrait of Colorado history using 100 of the most compelling artifacts from Colorado’s history. These objects reveal how Colorado has evolved over time, allowing readers to draw multiple connections among periods, places, and people. Collectively, the essays offer a treasure trove of historical insight and unforgettable detail. Beginning with Indigenous people and ending in the early years of the twenty-first century, Wei traces Colorado’s story by taking a close look at unique artifacts that bring to life the cultures and experiences of its people. For each object, a short essay accompanies a full-color photograph. These accessible accounts tell the human stories behind the artifacts, illuminating each object’s importance to the people who used it and its role in forming Colorado’s culture. Together, they show how Colorado was shaped and how Coloradans became the people they are. Theirs is

In Mud, Blood, and Ghosts: Populism, Eugenics, and Spiritualism in the American West (U Nebraska Press, 2023), University of Colorado poet and English professor Julie Carr uses family legend and lore to tell a history of the American West at the turn of the twentieth century. By tracking the story of her larger-than-life great-grandfather, the late nineteenth century People's Party politician and Nebraska settler Omer Kem, Carr explains her family's ties to systems and trends critical to understanding the American past, including race, colonialism, capitalism, and religion. Told from a unique voice all her own, Carr's narrative seamlessly ties together family, local, and national stories into a tale of American West and the region's politics which speaks clearly to the political divides in today's America. Mud, Blood, and Ghosts shows how the spirits of the past linger shockingly close at hand, even in the present day. Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thoma

This is the second Peoples & Things episode featuring a guest host. In this case, it is M. R. “Mols” Sauter, an assistant professor of information studies at the University of Maryland. Sauter and Lee Vinsel interview writer Malcolm Harris about his recent book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. Palo Alto (Little, Brown, and Company, 2023) is a BIG history of a single US city, how it developed, and how it fits into larger trend and processes of capitalist production and change. Harris, who grew up in the area, finds Palo Alto to be a place haunted by its many dark legacies, and the book’s conclusion raises large questions about the future of capitalism, justice, and the fate of the planet. This interview was recorded as a live stream as a part of Red May, “a month-long spree of red arts, red theory, and red politics based in Seattle, Washington” that “plots ways forward to a world beyond capitalism.” We are very grateful to all the Red May organizers for asking Peoples & Things to

The Cargo Rebellion: Those Who Chose Freedom (PM Press, 2022) tells a true story of mutiny on the high seas in which four hundred indentured Chinese men overthrew their captor, the Connecticut businessman and slave trader Leslie Bryson, taking a stand against an exploitative global enterprise. The laborers learned that Bryson’s claimed destination of San Francisco was a lie to trick them into deadly servitude in the dreaded guano islands of Peru. Reaching a dramatic tipping point, the mutineers rose up and killed Bryson and several of the ship's officers and then attempted to sail back to China. This book's centerpiece, a deft graphic account of the rebellion in the context of the “coolie trade” and the struggle to end traffic in human “cargo,” is supported by essays that spotlight the rebellion itself, how the subject of indentured Asian workers is being taught in classrooms, and how Chinese workers shaped the evolution of American music, particularly in the making of the first drum set. The Cargo Rebellion

Alien Territory: Radical, Experimental, & Irrelevant Music in 1970s San Diego (Billingsgate Media, 2023) is the untold story of a sleepy Navy town that became the unlikely gathering point for some of the most innovative, unclassifiable American artists of their time. The late 60s arrival of Harry Partch -- hobo composer, iconoclast and inventor of instruments such as the Harmonic Canon and Quadrangularis Reversum -- jump started a revolution that was as much social as it was musical, drawing on the occult, self-realization and radical political movements of 70s Southern California. Artists as diverse as Partch, Pauline Oliveros, Kenneth Gaburo, Roger Reynolds, Diamanda Galás, Warren Burt, David Dunn, Robert Turman and Master Wilburn Burchette may have pursued different paths -- Sonic Meditations, compositional linguistics, microtonal scales, invented instruments, cutting edge electronics, underwater synthesizers, Tibetan throat singing, environmental sound, pure noise -- but they also sought to dismantle the

When we teach about how women go into politics, how are we looking for the places and ways that women get involved? Are we giving enough consideration to small towns, and to grassroots work? Heather Lende joins us to share what it was like to run for office in her Alaskan town. This episode considers: How she ended up in Alaska. What led her to run for office. Why she was subjected to a recall. How she rebuilt relationships with neighbors who voted against her, and what happened when she couldn’t. A discussion of the book Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small Town Politics. Today’s book is: Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small Town Politics, by Heather Lende. Lende was one of the thousands of women inspired to take a more active role in politics during the past few years. But tiny, breathtakingly beautiful Haines—a place accessible from the nearest city, Juneau, only by boat or plane—isn’t the sleepy town that it appears to be. From a bitter debate about the expansion of th