New Books in the American West

New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west

  1. 4d ago

    Spanish Louisiana: Contest for Borderlands, 1763–1803 with Frances Kolb Turnbell (LSU Press, 2024)

    Sandwiched between the long period of French colonization, and the brief return to the French empire before the Americans enter the scene, the Spanish period of Louisiana's history is often ignored by historians. Yet, according to University of North Alabama historian Frances Kolb Turnbell, scholars of Vast Early America and the American West ignore this three decade period at their own peril. In Spanish Louisiana: Contest for Borderlands, 1763-1803 (LSU Press, 2024), Turnbell argues that the Spanish period of Louisiana's history is a prime example of historical contingency. The people - Black, white, Indigenous, and the many who straddled such categories - assumed the colony would stay in Spanish hands indefinitely, and made choices based on that assumption. The actions of Native people or American traders only make sense through this specific and contextual lens. And although this Spanish period did come to a close, its legacy endured well into the American period of the region's history. An excellent example of borderlands history, Turnbell's book urges scholars to reevaluate the history of the American West during the revolutionary period to uncover what else may have been missed beneath the Mississippi's murky waters and lush bayous. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. 6d ago

    Multiracial Mandarin: Asian Americans and Impossible Language with David Shuang Song (U of Minnesota Press, 2026)

    Who has the “right” to learn Mandarin Chinese? In Multiracial Mandarin: Asian Americans and Impossible Language (U Minnesota Press, 2026), Dr. David Shuang Song examines how matters of race and privilege shape US Mandarin language education and who has access to it. Through a two-year ethnographic study of two Bay Area high schools where diasporic and heritage speakers learn Mandarin alongside Black and Latinx students, Song advances a sociological and educational–linguistic inquiry into how language interacts with our understanding of identity and equity. Comparing classroom activities in two public schools, Dr. Song investigates teachers who seek to make Mandarin accessible while detaching it from its cultural roots. As he explores the difficulties of limited resources, racial inequality, and pedagogical practices inherent in multiracial Mandarin instruction, Dr. Song shows how language education complicates how educators understand Asian American students and troubles conventional conversations around race and racial equity in schools. Arguing that language practice and instruction must always be considered in relation to diaspora, ethnicity, and racialization, Multiracial Mandarin offers a frank analysis of the risks and benefits of teaching a diasporic language and asks if this practice ought to be replicated in more schools. As he applies innovative conceptual frameworks for talking about language among Asian Americans, Dr. Song’s timely and theoretically sophisticated analysis has wide-ranging implications for how students, teachers, and administrators approach essential questions around education, privilege, and language survival. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. Oct 2

    Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing with Rahim Kurwa (U California Press, 2025)

    In this episode, Lilyanna D'Amato speaks with Rahim Kurwa about his book Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing (U California Press, 2025), which examines the policing of housing in Los Angeles' northernmost suburb, Antelope Valley. Kurwa traces the suburbs' relationship with Los Angeles from post WWII to the early 2000s and 2010s, when the region saw increased Black migration as result of the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, the largest rental assistance program for low-income families in the nation. Kurwa contextualizes the adoption and reception of the voucher system in Los Angeles at the end of the 20th century, and explores the participatory policing and criminalization practices used to evict Black residents and re-segregate the region. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. Sep 30

    The Quake That Drained the Desert with Mary Elizabeth Reynolds (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

    On May 3, 1887, an earthquake struck near the U.S.-Mexico border. Forty-three people died in Bavispe, Mexico; sixty miles north in Arizona, buildings swayed and a few collapsed, but no one was killed. Today, every person in southern Arizona lives with the underground aftermath of this earthquake: a drained aquifer.  The estimated 7.4 magnitude earthquake created a sixty-two-mile rupture, the longest known surface rupture by a normal fault. The Quake That Drained the Desert (University of Nebraska Press, 2026) by Mary Elizabeth Reynolds tells the story of the men who investigated the earthquake: a doctor and photographer from Tombstone and an engineer from Mexico. Reynolds retells the terror of the survivors while exploring the ways the earthquake continues to shape water use and legacies in the greater Southwest.  In this rigorous and gripping narrative, Reynolds unearths the aftermath of the quake, showing how it dramatically altered aquifers in southern Arizona and changed rivers that ensured the prosperity of two Mormon communities in southern Arizona and Mexico. With an eye to the present, this book asks us to consider how this underexamined quake marked the beginning of the water crisis in the region today, compacted by a century of groundwater pumping for agriculture, mining, and urban uses. As local governments and nonprofit organizations on both sides of the border now work to restore streams for wildlife habitat and flood control, they also hope to preserve water supplies for future generations.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. Sep 23

    Lee M. Panich and Gustavo Flores, "We Will Receive Justice: Native Histories of the Collapse of the California Missions" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

    We Will Receive Justice: Native Histories of the Collapse of the California Missions (U Nebraska Press, 2026) by Dr. Lee M. Panich & Gustavo Flores explores how Native people in the southern San Francisco Bay Area—the ancestors of today’s Ohlone community—navigated the collapse of the California mission system. The volume spans from Mexican independence in 1821 through the region’s annexation by the United States in 1846, as Native people from Mission Santa Clara and Mission San José fought for emancipation and restitution amid rapidly changing colonial circumstances.  The narrative is driven by a reexamination of archives related to the Pueblo of San José, the territorial capital of Monterey, and early U.S. court cases regarding Mexican-era land grants, contextualized through an in-depth analysis of mission records that illuminate the complex social connections of Native individuals and families. We Will Receive Justice offers an ethnohistorical lens for viewing the Indigenous history of Mexican California, examining not simply the history of colonization but how Native people drew on cultural traditions and social relationships to create new lives for themselves in the wake of the Franciscan mission system.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. Sep 21

    Eileen Luhr, "Golden States: How California Religion Went from Cautionary Tale to Global Brand" (U California Press, 2024)

    Since the beginning of European colonization, the sun-drenched land of California has always attracted dreamers and schemers. Whether it was Spanish missionaries, Russian fur traders, or American argonauts, the myth - or perhaps brand - of California has long been a place here one's wildest dreams can come true. Starting in the late nineteenth century and accelerating in the twentieth, that myth also attracted a wide array of starry eyed spiritualists. In Golden States: How California Religion Went from Cautionary Tale to Global Brand (U California Press, 2024), Cal State Long Beach history professor Eileen Luhr explains how and why this state has been such a haven for utopianists, gurus, and spiritual seekers of all kinds. Explaining the stories of individuals from Katherine Tingley to Emmanual Bronner (of soap fame) to Steve Jobs, Luhr shows how the reputation of California as a haven for deep thinkers and outside the box ideas is both well earned, and was carefully crafted over the course of many strange and wonderful decades. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. Sep 16

    William R. Handley, "Horizons of Catastrophe in the American West" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

    Horizons of Catastrophe in the American West (University of Nebraska Press, 2026) by Dr. William R. Handley contributes to discussions in the environmental humanities and western U.S. studies about how we read past cultural history in the light of our determined yet unknown future under climate catastrophe.   Examining an eclectic but interrelated and interdisciplinary range of photographs, films, and novels of the West; Western historiography; geological science; Tony Kushner’s Angels in America; the Los Angeles freeway system and the city’s layered temporalities; and the long poem form among contemporary Indigenous poets, Dr. Handley argues that artists within mostly twentieth-century settler cultures saw on past horizons of the West premonitions of catastrophe—without, of course, knowing what their civilization was doing to the atmosphere and what that portended for the planet’s future. The possibilities and limits of their artistic forms, Handley shows us, offer a way for us to find hope in the wreckage of the past and to forge a future grounded in environmental realism.   This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. Sep 8

    Claudia Verhoeven, "Love and Terror: The Helter-Skelter History of the Manson Murders" (Verso, 2026)

    Love and Terror, The Helter Skelter History of the Manson Murders (Verso, 2026) is the most recent addition to the hundreds of books and films devoted to the killings committed by Charlie Manson’s followers in Los Angeles in August 1969. What is different about this work is that the author Claudia Verhoeven is an intellectual historian whose previous book was on a Russian terrorist who tried to assassinate Tsar Alexander II in 1866. Verhoerven unpacks the various frames through which the participants, the trial lawyers, and the public at large interpreted the seemingly senseless violence. Manson was a charismatic ex-con whose lived on a ranch near LA with several dozen devoted followers, mostly teenage girls. After a drug deal gone wrong Manson arranged a series of grisly murders. The prosecution argued this was part of a crazy scheme, inspired by the Bible and the Beatles’ White Album, to start an apocalyptic race war. Skeptics argue Manson was just trying to cover up the drug murders. Verhoeven, an associate professor of history at Cornell, taught a class where she used the Manson case to train her students how to conduct historical research and how to think about history. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

See All (577)

Ratings & Reviews

4.4
out of 5
14 Ratings

About

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west

Information

You Might Also Like