New Books in the American West

By: Marshall Poe
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  • Summary

  • Interviews with Scholars of the American West about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west
    New Books Network
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Social Sciences World
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Episodes
  • Martha A. Sandweiss, "The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West" (Princeton UP, 2025)

    Martha A. Sandweiss, "The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West" (Princeton UP, 2025)
    Apr 15 2025
    A haunting image of an unnamed Native child and a recovered story of the American West In 1868, celebrated Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner traveled to Fort Laramie to document the federal government’s treaty negotiations with the Lakota and other tribes of the northern plains. Gardner, known for his iconic portrait of Abraham Lincoln and his visceral pictures of the Confederate dead at Antietam, posed six federal peace commissioners with a young Native girl wrapped in a blanket. The hand-labeled prints carefully name each of the men, but the girl is never identified. As The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West (Princeton University Press, 2025) goes in search of her, it draws readers into the entangled lives of the photographer and his subjects. Martha A. Sandweiss paints a riveting portrait of the turbulent age of Reconstruction and westward expansion. She follows Gardner from his birthplace in Scotland to the American frontier, as his dreams of a utopian future across the Atlantic fall to pieces. She recounts the lives of William S. Harney, a slave-owning Union general who earned the Lakota name “Woman Killer,” and Samuel F. Tappan, an abolitionist who led the investigation into the Sand Creek massacre. And she identifies Sophie Mousseau, the girl in Gardner’s photograph, whose life swerved in unexpected directions as American settlers pushed into Indian Country and the federal government confined Native peoples to reservations. Spinning a spellbinding historical tale from a single enigmatic image, The Girl in the Middle reveals how the American nation grappled with what kind of country it would be as it expanded westward in the aftermath of the Civil War. Martha A. Sandweiss is professor emerita of history at Princeton University, where she is founding director of the Princeton & Slavery Project. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west
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    52 mins
  • Ieva Jusionyte on American Guns in Mexico: Exit Wounds (EF, JP)

    Ieva Jusionyte on American Guns in Mexico: Exit Wounds (EF, JP)
    Apr 3 2025
    John and Elizabeth had the chance to talk with Ieva Jusionyte, anthropologist, journalist, emergency medical technician. Her award-winning books include Exit Wounds, which uses anthropological and journalistic methods to follow guns purchased in the United States through organized crime scenes in Mexico, and their legal, social and personal repercussions. Ieva described researching the topic, balancing structural understandings of how guns become entangled with people on both sides of the border with an emphasis on individual stories. The three also talked about how language captures and fails to capture violence, the ways violence and the fear of violence organize space, and the importance of a humble, responsive, and empathetic approach to speaking with people touched by gun violence. Mentioned in this episode: Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power (1985) Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence (1991) Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (2004) Yuri Herrera, Signs Preceding the End of the World (2009) tr. by Lisa Dillman, see RTB episode 48 "Transform, not Transfer: Lisa Dillman on Translation Deborah Thomas, Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation, 2019 Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985) Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer (1998) and the "state of exception" Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973) and the "zone" Nathan Thrall, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama (2023) Recallable Books/Films Ieva suggested E.P Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: the Origin of the Black Act (1975) for its thoughtful framing of state violence and its incredible detail, and also Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (2000), for the ways in which the book's structure enacts its argument. Elizabeth went with the documentary by Raul Paz Pastrana, Border South (2019), which also weaves together the stories of those affected, including the anthropologist Jason De León, in ways that account for the multidimensionality of human experience. John prasied the contested Northern Irish spaces of Anna Burns' novel Milkman (2018) Listen and Read Here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west
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    1 hr
  • Jason L. Newton, "Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest" (West Virginia UP, 2024)

    Jason L. Newton, "Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest" (West Virginia UP, 2024)
    Mar 29 2025
    What happened to the loggers of America’s past when lumbermen moved west and south in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did these communities continue to create value and meaning in these marginal lands? Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest (West Virginia University Press, 2024) by Dr. Jason L. Newton provides a new perspective on the process of industrialization in America through the study of rural workers in a cutover landscape. Back when resources started running scarce, the environment of the forest and bodies of workers became the natural resources from which mills and landowners extracted. Bodies and cutover landscapes were mobilized in new ways to increase the scale and efficiency of production—a brutal process for workers, human and animal alike. In the Northern Forest, an industrial working class formed in relation to the unique ways that workers' bodies were used to produce value and in relation to the seasonal cycles of the forest environment. Cutover Capitalism is an innovative historical study that combines methodological approaches from labor history, environmental history, and the new history of capitalism. The book tells a character-driven yet theoretically sophisticated story about what it was like to live through this process of industrialization. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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 episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west
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    56 mins
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