A New Yorker Best Book of the Year * A Southwest Book of the Year “Top Pick”
“American history did not begin in the Northeast. It began in the Southwest,’ Parker asserts, in this sweeping history.” —The New Yorker
A revelatory work of Southwest history that recenters the American origin story two-thousand miles west of Plymouth Rock, in El Paso, Texas—heart of Indigenous power and resistance, locus of Spanish colonization of North America, centuries-long hub of immigration, and underappreciated modern blueprint for a multi-ethnic United States.
"A grand tour of the Southwest, its people, culture, and history.” —S. C. Gwynne, author Empire of the Summer Moon
American history is almost always told from east to west. Yet a closer look at our past reveals an untold history, one that begins not in the East, but in the Southwest—at a Texan city located near the oldest archaeological evidence of human presence in the Americas: El Paso.
Situated in a naturally shallow crossing of the Rio Grande, El Paso was the crossroads of Indigenous America, the nexus of a thousand-year-old Native American migration and trade route linking Mesoamerican and Pueblo empires and beyond. It’s where, in 1540, the European conquest of the North American interior began, and where the United States’ manifest destiny was later achieved. Here, East met West where the dominant transatlantic rail route, the Southern Pacific, was completed in 1881. Here, the West was “won”—the longest chapter of the Indian Wars, including the decades-long Apache Wars, was fought not on the Great Plains but in the Southwest. It’s the past and present hub of immigrant America—more immigrants have passed through El Paso than Ellis Island—and where crucial battles for civil rights history were fought, with the city smashing through racial and ethnic discrimination before anywhere else in the nation.
The Crossing is a revelatory new work of borderlands history that recasts El Paso as the unacknowledged cradle of American history, where cultures have encountered each other for centuries and forged a thriving multi-ethnic community far ahead of the rest of the nation. As award-winning, El Paso–native journalist Richard Parker charts, this corner of the American West holds not only the framework of our American story, but also a model for a more diverse and flourishing country.
This sweeping account of the American West uncovers the pivotal moments that shaped the nation:
- An Untold American Origin: Discover why the American story truly began two-thousand miles west of Plymouth Rock, at the crossroads of ancient Indigenous empires on the Rio Grande.
- The Great Pueblo Revolt: Uncover the full story of the only successful Indigenous uprising against a European colonial power in North American history and its lasting impact on the continent.
- A New Immigration Story: Explore El Paso’s centuries-long role as the true hub of immigrant America?a port of entry that saw more traffic than Ellis Island and forged a multi-ethnic community ahead of its time.
- The Real Wild West: Go beyond the myths of the Great Plains to the actual heart of the Indian Wars, where the scorched-earth strategy of the Apache Wars became the longest conflict in American history.