New Books Network

About Stephen Hausmann

Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

NBN Episodes hosted by Stephen:

American West July 21, 2021

West of Slavery

The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire

Kevin Waite

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The geography of American slavery was continental, argues Dr. Kevin Waite, an assistant professor at Durham University, in West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (UNC Press, 2021). Rather …
American West July 9, 2021

Flood on the Tracks

Living, Dying, and the Nature of Disaster in the Elkhorn River Basin

Todd M. Kerstetter

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
If floods are inevitable, why do humans insist on building alongside riverbanks? Todd Kerstetter, professor of history at Texas Christian University, tries to answer that question in Flood on the Tracks: Living …
American West June 16, 2021

We Are the Land

A History of Native California

Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
California is often used as a synecdoche for the United States itself - America in microcosm. Yet, California was, is, and will always be, Native space. This fact is forcefully argued …
American West June 9, 2021

The Giants and Their City

Major League Baseball in San Francisco, 1976-1992

Lincoln A. Mitchell

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In 1976, the San Francisco Giants headed north of the border and became the Toronto Giants - or so the sportswriters of the time would have you believe. In The Giants …
American West May 21, 2021

Frontier Rebels

The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776

Patrick Spero

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Boston, Philadelphia, London...Fort Loudon, PA. One of these places is not usually included when imagining the crucial scenes of the American Revolution. In Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West …
American West May 7, 2021

Writing Kit Carson

Fallen Heroes in a Changing West

Susan Lee Johnson

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The only constant in Western history is change. Susan Lee Johnson, Harry Reid Endowed Chair in the History of the Intermountain West at UNLV, knows this better than most. Author of …
American West April 13, 2021

California Exposures

Envisioning Myth and History

Richard White

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
This book began as a bet between a father and son: could Richard White, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and renowned historian of the American West, tell a complete history of …
American West April 9, 2021

Rodeo as Refuge, Rodeo as Rebellion

Gender, Race, and Identity in the American Rodeo

Elyssa Ford

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Imagine a rodeo rider atop a bucking bronco, hat in hand, straining to remain astride. Is the rider in your mind's eye white? Is the person male? Popular imaginings and high …
American West March 8, 2021

Calamity

The Many Lives of Calamity Jane

Karen Jones

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Calamity Jane is an enigma of Western history. Clad in men’s clothing, she rode across the American West in the latter half of the 19th century, making a name for …
American West February 24, 2021

Cinematic Settlers

The Settler Colonial World in Film

Janne Lahti and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The medium of cinema emerged during the height of Victorian-era European empires, and as a result, settler colonial imperialism has thematically suffused film for well over a century. In Cinematic …
American West February 23, 2021

This Land Is My Land

Rebellion in the West

James R. Skillen

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
On January 6th, 2021, when right wing supporters of Donald Trump staged an insurrection at the US Capitol building, they were participating in a long tradition of conservative rebellion with …
American West October 26, 2020

To Live and Defy in LA

How Gangsta Rap Changed America

Felicia Angeja Viator

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In 1985, Greg Mack, a DJ working for Los Angeles radio station KDAY, played a song that sounded like nothing else on West Coast airwaves: Toddy Tee’s “The Batteram,” a …
General History September 30, 2020

The Destruction of the Bison

An Environmental History, 1750-1920

Andrew C. Isenberg

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In 1800, tens of millions of bison roamed the North American Great Plains. By 1900, fewer than 1,000 remained. In The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (Cambridge …
General History September 11, 2020

A Bad Peace and A Good War

Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799

Mark Santiago

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This attack ended what had bene …
General History August 19, 2020

Unfair Labor?

American Indians and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago

David R. M. Beck

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was in many ways the crowning event of the nineteenth century United States. Held in Chicago, the metropolis of the West, and visited by tens …
General History August 5, 2020

Breakaway Americas

The Unmanifest Future of Jacksonian America

Thomas Richards Jr.

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In Breakaway Americas: The Unmanifest Future of Jacksonian America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), Thomas Richards Jr., a history teacher at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, argues that the map of …
General History March 9, 2020

Color Coded

Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016

Walter Nugent

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The political West is far from monochrome, writes Walter Nugent in Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Over the last half century …
General History December 19, 2019

Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage

A Personal History of the Allotment Era

Darnella Davis

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage: A Personal History of the Allotment Era (U New Mexico Press, 2018), Darnella Davis combines the personal with the national in telling …
General History November 25, 2019

Outriders

Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West

Rebecca Scofield

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Rodeo is one of the indelible images of culture in the American West. The John Wayne-like cowboy tenaciously hanging on to the bucking bronc is a classic vision of what …
American West November 21, 2019

San Francisco Year Zero

Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team

Lincoln A. Mitchell

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
1978 was the year that changed San Francisco forever, writes Lincoln A. Mitchell in San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team (Rutgers University Press …
General History August 23, 2019

America's West

A History, 1890-1950

David M. Wrobel

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In America's West: A History, 1890-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), David M. Wrobel describes a sixty year period of remarkable change for the vast region. By focusing on politics, demography …
General History July 29, 2019

The Injustice Never Leaves You

Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas

Monica Muñoz Martinez

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
On January 28, 1918, just outside of town of Porvenir, Texas, US Army servicemen, Texas Rangers, and civilians murdered 15 unarmed Mexican men and boys. This massacre was not an …
American West July 24, 2019

Seeds of Empire

Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850

Andrew Torget

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The secession of Texas from Mexico was a dry run for the slaveholder’s republic of the Confederate States of America, argues Andrew Torget in Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and …
General History July 1, 2019

Charros

How Mexican Cowboys Are Remapping Race and American Identity

Laura R. Barraclough

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In Charros: How Mexican Cowboys Are Remapping Race and American Identity (University of California Press, 2019), Dr. Laura R. Barraclough tells a surprising story about the urban American West. Barraclough …