A selection of scholarly articles, books, and digital projects related to Southern California history and 1776. The LA2026 team will continue to update this list as programs take place.

 

Akins, Damon B. and William J. Bauer, Jr. We Are the Land: A History of Native California. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. 

Allen, Danielle. Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality. New York: Liveright, 2014.

Archibald, Robert. The Economic Aspects of the California Missions. Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1978.

Aron, Stephen. Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Balderrama, Francisco E. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. 

Bargellini, Clara, and Michael K. Komanecky. The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain 1600–1821. Mexico City: Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, 2009.

Bauer, William J., Jr. California through Native Eyes: Reclaiming History. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016.

Baumgartner, Alice L. South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War. New York: Basic Books, 2020.

Blackhawk, Ned. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U. S. History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023.

Brooks, Lisa. Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018.

Chavez, Yve. Indigenizing California Mission Art and Architecture. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2025. 

Chavez, Yve, and Nancy Marie Mithlo, eds. Visualizing Genocide: Indigenous Interventions in Art, Archives, and Museums. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2022.

Chávez-Garcia, Miroslava. Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s to the 1880s. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004. 

Deverell, William. Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of its Mexican Past. University of California Press, 2004.

Estrada, William D. The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.

Faragher, John Mack. Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles. New York: W.W. Norton, 2016. 

Farmer, Jared. Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees. New York: Basic Books, 2022. 

—–. Trees in Paradise: A California History. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. 

Grenier, Judson, Doyce Blackman Nunis, and Jean Bruce Poole, eds. A Guide to Historic Places in Los Angeles County: Prepared under the Auspices of the History Team of the City of Los Angeles American Revolution Bicentennial Committee. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishing Co., 1978. 

Haas, Lisbeth. Saints and Citizens: Indigenous Histories of Colonial Missions and Mexican California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.

Hackel, Steven W. Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father. New York: Hill and Wang, 2013.

—–. Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850. Williamsburg and Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

Jackson, Robert H., and Edward D. Castillo. Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization: The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.

Kryder-Reid, Elizabeth. California Mission Landscapes: Race, Memory, and the Politics of Heritage. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

Lightfoot, Kent G. Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

López, César. “Mexican American Parrhesia at Troy.” California History 98, no. 1 (2021): 28-55. 

Loza, Mireya. Defiant Workers: Race, Sexuality, and the Political Visions of Braceros. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017. 

Lytle-Hernández, Kelly. City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017. 

Madley, Benjamin. An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

Miranda, Deborah A. Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir. Berkeley: Heyday, 2013.

Montoya, Sarah. “Moving Toward Accountability: Challenging Settler Narratives through Interpretive Shifts and Tribal Engagement at Anza National HIstoric Trail.” Park Stewardship Forum 42, no. 1 (2026): 101-110. 

Panich, Lee. Narratives of Persistence: Indigenous Negotiations of Colonialism in Alta and Baja California. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2021.

PARES (Portal de Archivos Españoles). A large list of archival collections and digitized archives about Spain and its American colonies.

Perl-Rosenthal, Nathan. The Long Revolution: Creating a United States after 1776. Basic Books, 2026.

Poole, Jean Bruce., and Tevvy. Ball. El Pueblo: The Historic Heart of Los Angeles. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002.

Ramírez, Marla A. Banished Citizens: A History of the Mexican American Women Who Endured Repatriation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2025. 

Reid, Joshua L. The Sea Is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs, an Indigenous Borderlands People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.

Rushforth, Brett. Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France. Williamsburg and Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute/University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Russell, Craig H. From Serra to Sancho: Music and Pageantry in the California Missions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Salomon, Carlos Manuel. Pío Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010. 

Sandos, James A. Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Saunt, Claudio. Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory. New York: W.W. Norton, 2020.

—–. West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776. New York: Norton, 2014.

Schneider, Tsim D. The Archaeology of Refuge and Recourse: Coast Miwok Resilience and Indigenous Hinterlands in Colonial California. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2021.

Sepulveda, Charles. Native Alienation: Spiritual Conquest and the Violence of California Missions. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2024. 

Slonimsky, Nora, Mark Boonshoft, and Ben Wright, eds. American Revolutions in the Digital Age. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2024. 

Snyder, Christina. Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Torres-Rouff, David Samuel. Before L.A.: Race, Space, and Municipal Power in Los Angeles, 1781-1894. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. 

Witgen, Michael. Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America. Williamsburg and Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2022.