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Podcast: New Books in Genocide Studies
Episode: Benjamin Madley, “An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873” (Yale UP, 2016)
Description: In less than thirty years, California’s Indian population fell from 150,000 to 30,000. In An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (Yale University Press, 2016), Benjamin Madley, Associate Professor of History at UCLA, argues that war or disease can’t explain this population drop. The state and federal government carried out genocide against California Indians between 1846 and 1873. Madley uncovers, in excruciating detail, how government officials created a killing machine that cost at least $1,700,000.
An American Genocide has won many awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, the Raphael Lemkin Book Award from...