A conversation with historian Adam M. Sowards about their weekly Taking Bearing essays series, "Being Historically Faithful in Public" article, and broader work in public writing.

Dr. Adam Sowards is an environmental historian and writer, specializing in public lands and conservation in the US West especially the Pacific Northwest. Much of his public writings can be accessed at adamsowards.net. Dr. Sowards earned his Ph.D. in History from Arizona State University and was professor of history from the University of Idaho 2003-2022. He is now retired with emeritus status and working as a freelance writer. His published books include the following (links to purchase here):

• Making America’s Public Lands: The Contested History of Conservation on Federal Lands. American Ways series, ed. John David Smith. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.
• An Open Pit Visible from the Moon: The Wilderness Act and the Fight to Protect Miners Ridge and the Public Interest. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020.
• Editor. Idaho’s Place: A New History of the Gem State. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014.
• The Environmental Justice: William O. Douglas and American Conservation. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2009
• United States West Coast: An Environmental History. Nature and Human Societies Series, ed. Mark Stoll. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2007.

----more----

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 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:

• The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures at the Edge of a City (Knopf Doubleday, 1999)
• A Whale Hunt: How a Native-American Village Did What No One Thought It Could (Scribner, 2002)
• Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants (Bloomsbury, 2005)
• How Not to Get Rich: Or Why Being Bad Off Isn't So Bad (Bloomsbury, 2005)
• Cross Country: Fifteen Years and 90,000 Miles on the Roads and Interstates of America with Lewis and Clark (Bloomsbury, 2006)
• The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant (Harper Perennial, 2009)
• My American Revolution: A Modern Expedition Through History's Forgotten Battlegrounds (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013)

----more----

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