A conversation with historian Robert Sullivan about their book

Double Exposure:

Resurveying the West with Timothy O'Sullivan, America's Most Mysterious War Photographer

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024)

Robert Sullivan is a writer and journalist who has written for The New Yorker, New York Times, Vogue, and A Public Space, among other outlets. He is a New York Times bestselling author multiple times over, with titles including: 

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The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook, Bluesky, or X/Twitter, or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org.

A conversation with historian Jason Heppler about their book

Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism

(University of Oklahoma Press, Environment in Modern North America Series, 2024)

Dr. Jason A. Heppler is a historian and digital historian, currently working as Senior Developer at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and an adjunct professor of history at George Mason University. He earned a BA in history from South Dakota State University and an MA and PhD in history from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Prior to his current positions at George Mason he held posts at Stanford University's Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, Dept. of History, and Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Research, and the University of Nebraska at Omaha's Sustainability program, Libraries, and history department. He co-edited a 2020 University of Cincinnati Press volume with Rebecca Wingo, Digital Community Engagement: Partnering Communities with the Academy, which won the 2021 National Council on Public History Book Award. His first monograph, which we talk about today, Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism (University of Oklahoma Press, Volume 9 in the Environment in Modern North America Series, 2024).

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook, Bluesky, or X/Twitter, or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org.

A conversation with historian Coll Thrush about their book

Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific

(University of Washington Press, 2025)

Coll Thrush is Professor of History and associate faculty in Critical Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia. He earned a B.A. from Fairhaven College at Western Washington University and PhD in History from the University of Washington. His first book, Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place (University of Washington Press, Weyerhauser Environmental Book Series, 2007) won the 2007 Washington State Book Award and came out in a 2nd edition in 2017. In 2011 Thrush and Colleen E. Boyd co-edited Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American Culture and History (University of Nebraska Press, 2011). His next monograph was Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire (Yale University Press, Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity, 2016). Just last week, he published his new book Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific (University of Washington Press, Emil and Kathleen Sick Book Series in Western History and Biography, 2025).

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook, Bluesky, or X/Twitter, or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org.

Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com

A conversation with scholar William Grady about their book

Redrawing the Western:

(University of Texas Press, 2024)

Dr. William Grady is an independent scholar and library based in the United Kingdom in Manchester. He earned a PhD in English from the University of Dundee and a masters of research and bachelors of arts in film and media studies from Manchester Metropolitan University. He held a post-doctoral research post at the University of the Arts in London, and has taught courses on comics, media theory, and film history at the University of Dundee and Manchester Metropolitan University, where he now works as a collections librarian.

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms.

Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook, Bluesky, or Twitter, or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org.

Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com

A conversation with urban planner and architectural historian James Michael Buckley about their book

City of Wood:

San Francisco and the Architecture of the Redwood Lumber Industry

(University of Texas Press, 2024)

James Michael Buckley is an urban planner, recently retired from the University of Oregon where he was an associate professor and venerable chair in historic preservation, and the director of the historic preservation program in the School of Architecture and Environment. Previously, he held teaching positions at MIT, San Francisco State University, and the University of California Berkley, where he earned an MA in city and regional planning and a PhD in architecture. He also holds a BA in Art History and American Studies from Yale University.

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms.

Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook, Bluesky, or Twitter, or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org.

Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com

A conversation with historian Amanda Van Lanen about their book

The Washington Apple: Orchards and the Development of Industrial Agriculture

(University of Oklahoma Press, 2022).

Amanda L. Van Lanen is Professor of History and Humanities Division Chair at Lewis-Clark State College. A historian of the American West, agriculture, and the environment, you can follow her regular blog posting about "cookbooks, stories, and recipes from the back of the fridge," at https://historyreheated.com/.

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms.

Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook, Bluesky, or Twitter, or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org.

Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com

A conversation with historian John William Nelson about their book,

Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent

(University of North Carolina Press, 2023)

John William Nelson is assistant professor of history at Texas Tech University, where he teaches courses on Colonial America, the American West, the Atlantic World, and Native American history. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Notre Dame. In addition to a couple book chapters in Routeledge anthologies, Nelson published award-winning articles in the Michigan Historical Review in 2019 and William and Mary Quarterly in 2021. His 2023 book that we discuss today, Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent (University of North Carolina Press, David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History Series, 2023). It won the 2024 W. Turrentine-Jackson Prize (Western History Association), 2024 Superior Achievement Award (Illinois State Historical Society), an Honorable Mention for the 2024 Jon Gjerde Book Award (Midwestern History Association), and was a Shortlist Award Recipient for the 2024 Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award (The Newberry Library).

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms.

Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook, Bluesky, or Twitter/X, or get more information @ https://reddcenter.byu.edu and https://www.writingwestward.org.

Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com

A conversation with journalist, author, and poet Samuel Western about his book,

The Spirit of 1889:

(University Press of Kansas, 2024)

Samuel Western is a prolific journalist and writer of the American West. In addition to having taught various courses on Wyoming history and culture at the University of Wyoming in past years, he was a correspondent for the Economist for over 30 years, published in the Wall Street Journal, LIFE, Sports Illustrated, High Country News, Montana: the Magazine of Western History, and other outlets. Western won two Wyoming Literary Fellowships, once for poetry and once for fiction, and is the author of the book Pushed Off The Mountain, Sold Down the River; Wyoming’s Search For Its Soul (Homestead Publishing, 2002), the prose poetry collection A Random Census of Souls (Daniel & Daniel Publishers, 2015), which was finalist for best poetry book 2010 by the High Plains Book Awards, the novel Canyons (Daniel & Daniel Publishers, 2015), which was also published in French in 2017, and most recently, the book The Spirit of 1889: Restoring the Lost Promise of the Great Plains and Northern Rockies (University Press of Kansas, 2024).

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink (www.bwrensink.org) for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University and hosted by. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook or Twitter or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org. Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com

A conversation with historian James Tejani about their book

A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth:

The Making of the Port of Los Angeles—and America

(W. W. Norton, 2024)

James Tejani is associate professor of history at California Polytechnic State University. He holds a BAs in history and political science from the University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. His first book, A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles—and America (W. W. Norton, 2024). A decade ago he published two articles from this project, both of which won awards. His Southern California Quarterly article, “Dredging the Future: The Destruction of Coastal Estuaries and the Creation of Metropolitan Los Angeles, 1858-1913,” won the Doyce B. Nunis Jr. Award from the Historical Society of Southern California and the Ray Allen Billington Prize from the Western History Association, and his Western Historical Quarterly article, “Harbor Lines: Connecting the Histories of Borderlands and Pacific Imperialism in the Making of the Port of Los Angeles, 1858-1908,” earned an honorable mention for the Alice Hamilton Prize from the American Society for Environmental History.

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink (www.bwrensink.org) for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University (reddcenter.byu.edu). Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook or Twitter or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org. Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com

A conversation with historian Holly Miowak Guise about her book,

Dr. Guise is Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico and holds a BA in Native American Studies from Stanford University and an MA and PhD in History from Yale University. She is the author of multiple books chapters and a 2022 article in the WHQ, “Who is Doctor Bauer?: Rematriating a Censored Story on Internment, Wardship, and Sexual Violence in Wartime Alaska, 1941-1944, " which won the Western History Association's Arrell M. Gibson Award for the best essay of the year on the history of Native Americans, Jensen-Miller Award for the best article in the field of women and gender in the North American West, Vicki L. Ruiz Award for best article on race in the North American West, and Oscar O. Winther Award for best article published in the Western Historical Quarterly (2023), and the Western Association of Women Historians Judith Lee Ridge Prize for best article in the field of history (2024). In 2022 she received both an American Council of Learned Societies and Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to aid in her research that culminated in her book. Check out the book's companion website, ww2alaska.com to sample some of the oral history interviews that formed a foundation for her work.

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink (www.bwrensink.org) for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University and hosted by. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook or Twitter or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org. Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com