The States of America: The Southwest

The Histories Of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma & Texas In One Collected Volume

The American Southwest is where the nation's most enduring conflicts have played out across centuries—struggles over sovereignty, water, land, and identity that continue shaping our present. In this masterful collection of state histories, Daniel Hardy reveals how Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas share a profound common story that transcends their individual narratives.

From ancient Puebloan cliff dwellings to Spanish missions, from the violence of territorial conquest to the broken promises of Indian Territory, from cattle empires to oil booms, Hardy traces the forces that forged these four states into a region unlike any other in America. Here, Indigenous nations, Hispanic communities, and Anglo settlers created a tricultural landscape where multiple traditions, languages, and legal systems collided and merged. Here, the scarcity of water determined who prospered and who perished. Here, the last continental territories to achieve statehood became laboratories for the challenges facing twenty-first-century America.

Hardy's vivid prose brings to life the complexity of the Southwest—its beauty and brutality, its promise and betrayal, its remarkable resilience. Rather than offering sanitized tales of frontier progress, he presents an honest reckoning with a past that remains powerfully present. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand not just a region, but the contested nature of American expansion itself, The States Of America: The Southwest reveals how four states tell one indispensable story.