The Girl in the Middle
A Recovered History of the American West
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
The Girl in the Middle
Buy for $22.40
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Kate Handford
About this listen
This audiobook narrated by Kate Handford spins a spellbinding tale of the American West from a single haunting image of an unnamed Native child
In 1868, celebrated Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner traveled to Fort Laramie to document the federal government's treaty negotiations with the Lakota and other tribes of the northern Plains. Gardner, known for his iconic portrait of Abraham Lincoln and his visceral pictures of the Confederate dead at Antietam, posed six federal peace commissioners with a young Native girl wrapped in a blanket. The hand-labeled prints carefully name each of the men, but the girl is never identified. As The Girl in the Middle goes in search of her, it draws listeners into the entangled lives of the photographer and his subjects.
Martha A. Sandweiss paints a riveting portrait of the turbulent age of Reconstruction and westward expansion. She follows Gardner from his birthplace in Scotland to the American frontier, as his dreams of a utopian future across the Atlantic fall to pieces. She recounts the lives of William S. Harney, a slave-owning Union general who earned the Lakota name "Woman Killer," and Samuel F. Tappan, an abolitionist who led the investigation into the Sand Creek massacre. And she identifies Sophie Mousseau, the girl in Gardner's photograph, whose life swerved in unexpected directions as American settlers pushed into Indian Country and the federal government confined Native peoples to reservations.
Spinning a spellbinding historical tale from a single enigmatic image, The Girl in the Middle reveals how the American nation grappled with what kind of country it would be as it expanded westward in the aftermath of the Civil War.
©2025 Martha A. Sandweiss (P)2025 Princeton University PressPeople who viewed this also viewed...
-
Tiger Heat: Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger tank
- By: Steve Stone
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 3 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Considered one of the finest tanks of WWII, the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger tank killed 11.52 tanks for every one Tiger destroyed in battle. Tigers suffered a large number of non-combat losses, however, as the chaos of wartime and the Tiger’s mechanical reliability reduced the number of deployable tanks, then along with frequent breakdowns the Tiger managed only 5.25 enemy tanks killed for every lost Tiger. The Second World War began with the lightning German Blitzkrieg as their Wehrmacht raced across Europe, spearheaded by the most dreaded weapon of the 20th century. No German tank better ...
By: Steve Stone
-
The Fate of the Generals
- MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines
- By: Jonathan Horn
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1
For the doomed stand American forces made in the Philippines at the start of World War II, two generals received their country’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor. One was the charismatic and controversial Douglas MacArthur, whose orders forced him to leave his soldiers on the islands to starvation and surrender but whose vow to return echoed around the globe. The other was the gritty Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who became a hero to the troops whose fate he insisted on sharing even when it meant becoming the highest-ranking American prisoner of the Japanese.
By: Jonathan Horn
-
American Raiders
- The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe's Secrets
- By: Colonel Wolfgang W. E. Samuel
- Narrated by: Basil Sands
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
The last battle of World War II was not for military victory but for the technology of the Third Reich. In American Raiders, Wolfgang Samuel assembles from official Air Force records and survivors' interviews the largely untold stories of the disarmament of the Luftwaffe and of Operation Lusty—the hunt for Nazi technologies.
-
The English Ecstasy
- How England Rose to Greatness 1558-1649 (Includes Bonus Section on Francis Bacon)
- By: Will Durant, Richard Smoley - foreword
- Narrated by: Rob Jones, David Markus
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
The British Empire is unique in world history. How did this small island come to rule a full quarter of the globe? No other nation has matched this achievement.
By: Will Durant, and others
-
Journeys of the Mind
- A Life in History
- By: Peter Brown
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 30 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the "neglected half-millennium" now known as late antiquity was crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age.
By: Peter Brown
-
The Third Reich of Dreams
- The Nightmares of a Nation
- By: Charlotte Beradt, Damion Searls - translator, Dunya Mikhail - foreword
- Narrated by: Olivia Vinall
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Charlotte Beradt began having unsettling dreams after Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. She envisioned herself being shot at, tortured and scalped, surrounded by Nazis in disguise, and breathlessly fleeing across fields with storm troopers at her heels. Shaken by these nightmares and banned as a Jew from working, she began secretly collecting dreams from her friends and neighbors, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Disguising these "diaries of the night" in code and concealing them in the spines of books from her extensive library, she smuggled them out of the country one by one.
By: Charlotte Beradt, and others
-
Tiger Heat: Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger tank
- By: Steve Stone
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 3 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Considered one of the finest tanks of WWII, the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger tank killed 11.52 tanks for every one Tiger destroyed in battle. Tigers suffered a large number of non-combat losses, however, as the chaos of wartime and the Tiger’s mechanical reliability reduced the number of deployable tanks, then along with frequent breakdowns the Tiger managed only 5.25 enemy tanks killed for every lost Tiger. The Second World War began with the lightning German Blitzkrieg as their Wehrmacht raced across Europe, spearheaded by the most dreaded weapon of the 20th century. No German tank better ...
By: Steve Stone
-
The Fate of the Generals
- MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines
- By: Jonathan Horn
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1
For the doomed stand American forces made in the Philippines at the start of World War II, two generals received their country’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor. One was the charismatic and controversial Douglas MacArthur, whose orders forced him to leave his soldiers on the islands to starvation and surrender but whose vow to return echoed around the globe. The other was the gritty Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who became a hero to the troops whose fate he insisted on sharing even when it meant becoming the highest-ranking American prisoner of the Japanese.
By: Jonathan Horn
-
American Raiders
- The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe's Secrets
- By: Colonel Wolfgang W. E. Samuel
- Narrated by: Basil Sands
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
The last battle of World War II was not for military victory but for the technology of the Third Reich. In American Raiders, Wolfgang Samuel assembles from official Air Force records and survivors' interviews the largely untold stories of the disarmament of the Luftwaffe and of Operation Lusty—the hunt for Nazi technologies.
-
The English Ecstasy
- How England Rose to Greatness 1558-1649 (Includes Bonus Section on Francis Bacon)
- By: Will Durant, Richard Smoley - foreword
- Narrated by: Rob Jones, David Markus
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
The British Empire is unique in world history. How did this small island come to rule a full quarter of the globe? No other nation has matched this achievement.
By: Will Durant, and others
-
Journeys of the Mind
- A Life in History
- By: Peter Brown
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 30 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the "neglected half-millennium" now known as late antiquity was crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age.
By: Peter Brown
-
The Third Reich of Dreams
- The Nightmares of a Nation
- By: Charlotte Beradt, Damion Searls - translator, Dunya Mikhail - foreword
- Narrated by: Olivia Vinall
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Charlotte Beradt began having unsettling dreams after Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. She envisioned herself being shot at, tortured and scalped, surrounded by Nazis in disguise, and breathlessly fleeing across fields with storm troopers at her heels. Shaken by these nightmares and banned as a Jew from working, she began secretly collecting dreams from her friends and neighbors, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Disguising these "diaries of the night" in code and concealing them in the spines of books from her extensive library, she smuggled them out of the country one by one.
By: Charlotte Beradt, and others
-
The Celts
- A Modern History
- By: Ian Stewart
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 22 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Based on new research conducted across Europe and in the United States, The Celts reveals when and how we came to call much of Europe "Celtic," why this idea mattered in the past, and why it still matters today, as the tide of nationalism is once again on the rise.
By: Ian Stewart
-
Doctors by Nature
- How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves
- By: Jaap de Roode
- Narrated by: Anand Jagatia
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1
Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were harnessing the power of nature's pharmacy to heal themselves. Doctors by Nature reveals what researchers are now learning about the medical wonders of the animal world. In this visionary book, Jaap de Roode argues that we have underestimated the healing potential of nature for too long and shows how the study of self-medicating animals could impact the practice of human medicine.
By: Jaap de Roode
-
The Six
- The Untold Story of the Titanic's Chinese Survivors
- By: Steven Schwankert
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
When the Titanic sank on a cold night in 1912, barely 700 people escaped with their lives. Among them were six Chinese men. Arriving in New York, these six were met with suspicion and slander. Less than 24 hours later, they were expelled from the country and vanished. When historian Steven Schwankert first stumbled across the fact that eight Chinese nationals were on-board, of whom all but two survived, he couldn’t believe that there could still be untold personal histories from the Titanic. Now, at last, their story can be told.
-
America, América
- A New History of the New World
- By: Greg Grandin
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 25 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, the first comprehensive history of the Western Hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both.
By: Greg Grandin
-
The Rebel Romanov
- Julie of Saxe-Coburg, the Empress Russia Never Had
- By: Helen Rappaport
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
In 1795, Catherine the Great of Russia was in search of a bride for her grandson Constantine, who stood third in line to her throne. In an eerie echo of her own story, Catherine selected an innocent young German princess, Julie of Saxe-Coburg, aunt of the future Queen Victoria. Though Julie had everything a young bride could wish for, she was alone in a court dominated by an aging empress and riven with rivalries, plotting, and gossip—not to mention her brute of a husband. She longed to leave Russia and her disastrous marriage, but her family in Germany refused to allow her to do so.
By: Helen Rappaport
-
Strangers in the Land
- Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America
- By: Michael Luo
- Narrated by: Eric Yang
- Length: 17 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
In 1889, while upholding Chinese exclusion, Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field characterized them as “strangers in the land.” Only in 1965 did America’s gates swing open to people like Luo’s parents, immigrants from Taiwan. Today there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States and yet the “stranger” label, Luo writes, remains. Drawing on archives from across the country and written with a New Yorker writer’s style and sweep, Strangers in the Land is revelatory and unforgettable, an essential American story.
By: Michael Luo
-
The Last Dynasty
- Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra
- By: Toby Wilkinson
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Alexander the Great and Cleopatra may be two of the most famous figures from the ancient world, but the Egyptian era bookended by their lives—the Ptolemaic period (305-30 BC)—is little known. In The Last Dynasty, Toby Wilkinson unravels the incredible story of this turbulent era.
By: Toby Wilkinson
-
Deadwood
- Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West
- By: Peter Cozzens
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Sifting through layers and layers of myth and legend—from nineteenth-century dime novels like Deadwood Dick to HBO prestige dramas to the casino billboards outside of present-day Deadwood trumpeting the hand of “aces and eights” that Hickok purportedly held when he was shot—Peter Cozzens unveils the true face of Deadwood, South Dakota, the storied mining town that sprang up in early 1876, just as the young United States was celebrating its hundredth birthday, and came raining down in ashes only three years later.
By: Peter Cozzens
-
The Last Days of Budapest
- The Destruction of Europe's Most Cosmopolitan Capital in World War II
- By: Adam LeBor
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Budapest, autumn 1943. After four years of war, Hungary was firmly allied with Nazi Germany. Budapest swirled with intrigue and betrayal, home to spies and agents of every kind. But the city remained an oasis in the midst of conflict where Allied POWs and Polish and Jewish refugees found sanctuary. All that came to an end in March 1944 when the Nazis invaded. By the summer Allied bombers were pounding Budapest’s grand boulevards and historic squares.
By: Adam LeBor
-
Lower than the Angels
- A History of Sex and Christianity
- By: Diarmaid MacCulloch
- Narrated by: Diarmaid MacCulloch
- Length: 25 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Few matters produce more public interest and public anxiety than sex and religion. Much of the political contention and division in societies across the world centres on sexual topics, and one-third of the global population is Christian in background or outlook. The issue goes to the heart of present-day religion.
-
The Invisible Spy
- Churchill's Rockefeller Center Spy Ring and America’s First Secret Agent of World War II
- By: Thomas Maier
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 6
As a tough but smart Italian American kid, Ernest Cuneo played Ivy League football at Columbia University and was in the old Brooklyn Dodgers NFL franchise before becoming a city hall lawyer and “Brain Trust'' aide to President Roosevelt. He was on the payroll of national radio columnist Walter Winchell and mingled with the famous and powerful. But his status as a spy remained a secret, hiding in plain sight. During this time, Cuneo began a close friendship with British spy Ian Fleming and helped inspire Fleming's James Bond novels.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
N excellent isten. sorry to see it end
- By "Old" but Good Reader on 04-10-25
By: Thomas Maier
-
The Illegals
- Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West
- By: Shaun Walker
- Narrated by: Paul Thornley
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 2
More than a century ago, the new Bolshevik government began sending Soviet citizens abroad as deep-cover spies, training them to pose as foreign aristocrats, merchants, and students. Over time, this grew into the most ambitious espionage program in history. Many intelligence agencies use undercover operatives, but the KGB was the only one to go to such lengths, spending years training its spies in language and etiquette, and sending them abroad on missions that could last for decades. These spies were known as “illegals.”
By: Shaun Walker