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New Books in the American West

New Books in the American West

By: Marshall Poe
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 Interviews with Scholars of the American West about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-westNew Books Network Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • Marc James Carpenter, "The War on Illahee: Genocide, Complicity, and Cover-Ups in the Pioneer Northwest" (Yale UP, 2025)

    Marc James Carpenter, "The War on Illahee: Genocide, Complicity, and Cover-Ups in the Pioneer Northwest" (Yale UP, 2025)
    Feb 13 2026
    The War on Illahee: Genocide, Complicity, and Cover-Ups in the Pioneer Northwest (Yale UP, 2025) by Marc James Carpenter is a history book about history. More specifically, it's a book about how history gets subsumed in myth, and why the truth often matters less than the story that ends up being told. In the 1850s across the Pacific Northwest, settlers engaged in bloody wars with several Indgienous tribes to seize their homelands - Illahee - for incorporation into the United States. Yet, when those same settlers sat down to write about their experiences, the bloodshed, danger, and trauma was transmuted via memory and a multi-generational game of telephone into a triumphant story of peaceful pioneers fairly trading Native people for their land. The War on Illahee is thus not just a history of Native and settler warfare in what is today Oregon and Washingotn, but also an argument for the power of history, and the insidiousness of choosing to forget the past. 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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    54 mins
  • Jameson R. Sweet, "Mixed-Blood Histories: Race, Law, and Dakota Indians in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

    Jameson R. Sweet, "Mixed-Blood Histories: Race, Law, and Dakota Indians in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
    Feb 9 2026
    Historical accounts tend to neglect mixed-ancestry Native Americans: racially and legally differentiated from nonmixed Indigenous people by U.S. government policy, their lives have continually been treated as peripheral to Indigenous societies. Mixed-Blood Histories: Race, Law, and Dakota Indians in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest (U Minnesota Press, 2025) intervenes in this erasure. Using legal, linguistic, and family-historical methods, Dr. Jameson R. Sweet writes mixed-ancestry Dakota individuals back into tribal histories, illuminating the importance of mixed ancestry in shaping and understanding Native and non-Native America from the nineteenth century through today. When the U.S. government designated mixed-ancestry Indians as a group separate from both Indians and white Americans—a distinction born out of the perception that they were uniquely assimilable as well as manipulable intermediate figures—they were afforded rights under U.S. law unavailable to other Indigenous people, albeit inconsistently, which included citizenship and the rights to vote, serve in public office, testify in court, and buy and sell land. Focusing on key figures and pivotal “mixed-blood histories” for the Dakota nation, Dr. Sweet argues that in most cases, they importantly remained Indians and full participants in Indigenous culture and society. In some cases, they were influential actors in establishing reservations and negotiating sovereign treaties with the U.S. government. Culminating in a pivotal reexamination of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, Mixed-Blood Histories brings greater diversity and complexity to existing understandings of Dakota kinship, culture, and language while offering insights into the solidification of racial categories and hierarchies in the United States. 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. 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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    59 mins
  • Tara Lohan, "Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life" (Island Press, 2025)

    Tara Lohan, "Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life" (Island Press, 2025)
    Jan 27 2026
    Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life (Island Press, 2025) is not Tara’s first book, she authored one at age eight. From their she followed her passion to become an accomplished environmental journalist, initially as a graduate student in literary non-fiction, followed by more than two decades of reporting on the confluence of water, energy and biodiversity. Her work has been published in such periodicals as The Nation, High Country News, Grist, Salon, The American Prospect and The Revelator. She also has been an editor on two books focusing on the global water crisis, Water Matters and Water Consciousness. 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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    37 mins
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