The Crossing

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

Richard Parker

$65

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

HARPER360
02 July 2025

History; History of the Americas; Social & cultural history; Migration, immigration & emigration; Indigenous peoples; Central government policies

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

A radical work of 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.

By: Richard Parker
Imprint: HARPER360
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 29mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9780063161917
ISBN 10: 0063161915
Pages: 448
Publication Date: 02 July 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Richard Parker is an award-winning journalist and author who writes about the American Southwest for the New York Times and other publications. In 2020 his commentary in the New York Times on the El Paso massacre was honored by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. In 2019 NBC News named him to “#NBCLatino20,” its list of the most influential Latinos in America. Parker’s first book, Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America, took a fresh look at the history of the Lone Star State to reconsider its present and future. Raised in El Paso, the son of an American father and a Mexican mother, he lives in Texas.

Reviews for The Crossing: El Paso, the Southwest, and America's Forgotten Origin Story

"""In the aftermath of the El Paso shooting -- the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern American history -- author and journalist Richard Parker has been a passionate, authentic voice for his community. In a media landscape often lacking Latino representation, he has spoken up for his fellow El Pasoans and Mexican-Americans with his pen or in person, bringing his grace and intellect to the coverage of a wrenching tragedy."" -- NBC News, #NBCLatino20 citation"