Access Utah

Joseph Ward, Dean of the USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences, is the editor of a new book titled “European Empires in the American South: Colonial and Environmental Encounters,” which examines the process of European expansion into a region that has come to be known as the American South. After Europeans began to cross the Atlantic with confidence, they interacted for three hundred years with one another, with the native people of the region, and with enslaved Africans in ways that made the South a significant arena of imperial ambition. As such, it was one of several similarly contested regions around the Atlantic basin.

Part elegy, part ode, part investigative science journalism, Jonathan Thompson’s new book “River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster” (Torrey House Press), tells the gripping story behind the 2015 Gold King Mine disaster that turned the Animas River in southwestern Colorado orange with sludge and toxic metals for more than 100 miles downstream, wreaking havoc on cities, farms, and the Navajo Nation along the way.

Nashville, August 1920. Thirty-five states have ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, twelve have rejected or refused to vote, and one last state is needed. It all comes down to Tennessee, the moment of truth for the suffragists, after a seven-decade crusade. The opposing forces include politicians with careers at stake, liquor companies, railroad magnates, and racists who don’t want black women voting. And then there are the “Antis”–women who oppose their own enfranchisement, fearing suffrage will bring about the moral collapse of the nation. They all converge in a boiling hot summer for a face-off replete with dirty tricks, betrayals and bribes, bigotry, Jack Daniel’s, and the Bible.

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Salt Lake Tribune religion reporter Peggy Fletcher Stack writes that “[s]ome Mormons — and plenty of others — were appalled to witness their church build a $1.5 billion mall in downtown Salt Lake City and hear their prophet proclaim, “Let’s go shopping.” Isn’t religion, they argued, supposed to be about feeding the hungry and clothing the poor? How is selling Tiffany jewelry, Nordstrom cocktail dresses and luxury condos any part of a Christian faith?” That’s the introduction to her report on historian Michael Quinn’s book “The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power.” Quinn, by the way, says that the LDS church sees its mission as serving both the spiritual and physical needs of its people.

A formerly homeless man tries to help young people in Southern Utah. A transgender person in Brigham City finds community in a coven of witches. A gay Navajo man finally decides to leave the reservation to escape the loneliness. And in a suburb of Salt Lake City, a family turns a Mormon tradition on its head to find fellowship. Those are descriptions of episodes from the UPR original series “LGBTQ: Off the Grid,” broadcasting through mid-March. The series explores the often unseen and unaddressed aspects of rural life for LGBTQ individuals and their families.

A formerly homeless man tries to help young people in Southern Utah. A transgender person in Brigham City finds community in a coven of witches. A gay Navajo man finally decides to leave the reservation to escape the loneliness. And in a suburb of Salt Lake City, a family turns a Mormon tradition on its head to find fellowship. Those are descriptions of episodes from the UPR original series “LGBTQ: Off the Grid,” broadcasting through mid-March. The series explores the often unseen and

In 2012, photographer Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and created Project 562, which reflects her commitment to visit, engage with and photograph all 562 plus Native American sovereign territories in the United States. With this project she has traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, many in her RV (which she has nicknamed the “Big Girl”) but also by horseback through the Grand Canyon, by train, plane, and boat and on foot across all 50 states.

“I began my writing career by exploring the tracks humans have left in nature. Now I’m mostly interested in the tracks nature leaves in us.” That’s author Gary Ferguson. He says that nature provides beauty, mystery and community, traits that each of us very much needs. He is the author of 25 books. We talked with Gary Ferguson a few months ago about his latest “Land on Fire.” Today we’ll talk with him about “The Carry Home” a haunting meditation on wilderness, conservation, and grief, written following the death of his wife in a canoeing accident. We’ll also talk about “Shouting at the Sky: Troubled Teens and the Promise of the Wild.” And we’ll talk about the Yellowstone wolves, which Gary Ferguson has written about in two books “Yellowstone Wolves: The First Year,” and “Decade of the Wolf.”

Lyndon Johnson's towering political skills and his ambitious slate of liberal legislation are the stuff of legend: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and environmental reform. But what happened after the bills passed? One man could not and did not go it alone. Bill Moyers, Jack Valenti, Joe Califano, Harry McPherson and the other staff members who comprised LBJ's inner circle were men as pragmatic and ambitious as Johnson, equally skilled in the art of accumulating power or throwing a sharp elbow.