All tagged Idaho

True West: Myth & Mending In The American West / Betsy Gaines Quammen

Historian and author Betsy Gaines Quammen returns to the podcast to discuss her new book, True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America, published by Torrey House Press. Building on her previous book, American Zion, Gaines Quammen follows the historical roots and trajectories of troubling political trends in the Western United States, decoupling the myths and material realities of the landscapes and the peoples and the more-than-human lives that occupy them.

“True West explores myths of the West and how, if left unexamined, they distort the realities of the present and exacerbate polarizations. These misperceptions about land, politics, liberty, and self-determination threaten the wellbeing of western communities overrun by newcomers seeking a dream—and the country, unless America recognizes the dangers of building a national identity on illusion. Gaines Quammen interrogates it all by listening, carefully, to people from varying political and cultural perspectives as she seeks to reconcile the deep anger and broad misunderstandings that linger amid myths that define and impede the West and America.”

Campaign Of Deception: Legacy Of Settler Violence In Southern Idaho / Dave Lundgren

David Lundgren, tribal attorney and author, joins me to discuss his new book, Massacre Rocks: A Campaign of Deception. 

Through years of research, Dave has uncovered "inconsistencies in historical accounts of emigrant massacres along the Oregon Trail that did not reflect official governmental records," most notably in the case of a massacre of white emigrants allegedly committed by a small band of Shoshonis, on the site now designated as Massacre Rocks State Park located just west of American Falls, Idaho. These inconsistencies have revealed, as in the case of this particular massacre, that many of these acts of mass murder along the Oregon Trail were committed by Mormon settlers in the region.