The Crossing

El Paso, the Southwest, and America’s Forgotten Origin Story

By: Richard Parker

Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year “‘American history did not begin in the Northeast. It began in the Southwest,’ Parker asserts, in this sweeping history.” —The New Yorker

A revelatory history that recenters the American story two-thousand miles west of Plymouth Rock, in El Paso, Texas—heart of Indigenous power and resistance, locus of European 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 a coun­ternarrative, 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 was fought not on the Great Plains but in the Southwest, with a scorched-earth strategy that went on for decades. 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 were fought, with the city smashing through racial and ethnic discrimination before anywhere else in the nation.

The Crossing is a revelatory new history of El Paso that recasts the city 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, the city holds not only the framework of our American story, but also a model for a more diverse and flourishing country.

empowering!

I not only enjoyed hearing the history, I needed to hear it! as an American I believe we need to learn from our past mistakes. especially how we have treated minorities and people of color. as a Mexican American it is important to embrace our culture and be proud and appreciative of the sacrifices of those who came before us. thank you.

Respect El Paso!

Parker mixes the history of El Paso with the history of the United States. I believe that for him, El Paso is the “fertile crescent” that has fed the culture of America. The introduction alone is gorgeous. I learned so much about America and its heart.

Well-researched narrative of the story of the Southwest

In addition to Lekson’s work on the ancient people of the Southwest and Bernardini’s “Becoming Hopi”, Parker’s story brings it home to the present.