Fugitive Landscapes

A "vibrant . . .inspired" environmental and transnational history of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, focusing on the copper-rich region of Arizona and Sonora (Daniel Arreola, Journal of Cultural Geography).

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Mexicans and Americans joined together to transform the U.S.–Mexico borderlands into a crossroads of modern economic development. Fugitive Landscapes reveals the forgotten story of their ambitious dreams and their ultimate failure to control this fugitive terrain.

Focusing on a mining region that spilled across the Arizona–Sonora border, author Samuel Truett shows how entrepreneurs, corporations, and statesmen tried to domesticate nature and society within a transnational context. Efforts to tame a "wild" frontier were stymied by labor struggles, social conflict, and revolution.

By exploring the making and unmaking of the U.S.–Mexico border, Fugitive Landscapes reveals how ordinary people resisted the domination of empires, nations, and corporations to shape transnational history on their own terms. By moving beyond traditional national narratives, it offers new lessons for our own border-crossing age.

Published in Cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies

"Truett's vignettes are pearls . . .enjoyable reading." —Rodolfo F. Acuña, Journal of American History

"Truett demonstrates convincingly how Mexican and U.S. histories intersect and intermingle just as the space they share clash and merge. This intriguing study also suggests how differently national histories would look and feel when re-centered and viewed from a transnational vantage point." —Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Brown University

"One of the most compelling borderlands narratives to date. . . . Highly recommended." —Choice