Book Reviewer Information

Utah State University 
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phone 435.797.1301
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Oscar O. Winther Award Winners

Bert M. Fireman Award

Bert M. Fireman (1913-1980) was, by choice and vocation, an Arizonan. Fireman worked as an AP and UP journalist after finishing his BA at Arizona State University in 1936. For thirteen years he wrote a daily column for the Phoenix Gazette titled “Under the Sun.” In the 1950s he narrated a local radio program “Arizona Crossroads” on the state’s history, and organized the Arizona Historical Foundation. Fireman was one of the moving forces in exploring and promoting Arizona history and western history. He traveled extensively and wrote for both popular and scholarly audiences in venues like Arizona Highways, Arizona and the West, The Historian, and The American West. He believed in accessible, readable history that would involve the broader public. With Madeline Paré, he authored two Arizona history texts, and was completing a third “informal history,” published posthumously in 1982 as Arizona: Historic Land.

“My father, whose struggles, energies, and dedication to and absolute delight in learning, inspired us,” writes his daughter Janet R. Fireman, Editor of California History and a member of the History Department at Loyola Marymount University. "Our thinking was to continue, in some way, one of my father's enormous pleasures: imparting keen interest and sharing his devotion to intellectual honesty with his students, with researchers and others—or perhaps infecting them with his avid curiosity and biting hunger for history. During the last thirteen years of his life at ASU, he held forth in large classes as a lecturer in Arizona history and as curator of the Arizona Collection in Hayden Library, as well as executive vice president of the Arizona Historical Foundation. After his death, we thought that supporting an award that might stimulate student research, writing, and achievement in Western history would honor his memory by perpetuating his passion,” (email correspondence, 1 July 2004).

First announced by the Western History Association Council at the 1982 WHA Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, the Bert M. Fireman Award recognizes the best student article published in the Western Historical Quarterly each year, as judged by the editors of the WHQ. The award is generously supported by the Fireman family.

A memorial for Bert Fireman appeared in the Summer 1980 issue of the Journal of San Diego History, http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/80summer/memoriam.htm, and the Journal of Arizona History published an autobiographical essay in its Spring 1982 issue. Janet R. Fireman’s WHA presidential address, “The Latitudes of Home: A Particular Place in Western History,” WHQ 30 no.1 (Spring 1999): 5-23, includes recollections of her father.

2012: Miles Powell, "Divided Waters: Heiltsuk Spatial Management of Herring Fisheries and the Politics of Native Sovereignty," Winter 2012, 463-84.

2011: Bob H. Reinhardt, "Drowned Towns in the Cold War West: Small Communities and Federal Water Projects," Summer 2011, 149--172.

2010: Todd Holmes, "The Economic Roots of Reaganism: Corporate Conservatives, Political Economy, and the United Farm Workers Movement, 1965-1970," Spring 2010, 55--80.

2009: Alexander I. Olson, "Heritage Schemes: The Curtis Brothers and the Indian Moment of Northwest Boosterism," Summer 2009, 159--178.

2008: Janne Lahti, “Colonized Labor: Apaches and Pawnees as Army Workers,” Autumn 2008, 283--302.

2007: Gretchen Heefner, “Missiles and Memory: Dismantling South Dakota’s Cold War,” Summer 2007, 181-203.

2006: Roxanne Willis, "A New Game in the North: Alaska Native Reindeer Herding, 1890-1940," Autumn 2006, 277-301.

2005: Nicolas G. Rosenthal, "Representing Indians: Native American Actor on Hollywood's Frontier," Autumn 2005, 329-352.

2004: James Feldman, "The View from Sand Island: Reconsidering the Perhipheral Economy, 1880-1940," Autumn 2004, 285-307.

2003: Matthew C. Whitaker, “‘Creative Conflict’: Lincoln and Eleanor Ragsdale, Collaboration, and Community Activism in Phoenix, 1953-1965,” Summer 2003, 165-190.

2002: Daniel M. Cobb, “‘Us Indians Understand the Basics’: Oklahoma Indians and the Politics of Community Action, 1964-1970,” Spring 2002, 41-66.

2001: Helen McLure, “The Wild, Wild Web: The Mythic American West and the Electronic Frontier,” Winter 2000, 457-76.

2000: Adam M. Sowards, “Administrative Trials, Environmental Consequences, and the Use of History in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest, 1926-1996,” Summer 2000, 189-214.

1999: Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Western Comanche Trade Center: Rethinking the Plains Indian Trade System,” Winter 1998, 485-513.

1998: Elliott Young, “Red Men, Princess Pocohontas, and George Washington: Harmonizing Race Relations in Laredo at the Turn of the Century,” Spring 1998, 49-85.

1997: Andrew H. Fisher, “The 1932 Handshake Agreement: Yakama Indian Treaty Rights and Forest Service Policy in the Pacific Northwest,” Summer 1997, 187-217.

1996: Brad Asher, “‘Their Own Domestic Difficulties’: Intra-Indian Crime and White Law in Western Washington Territory, 1873-1889,” Summer 1996, 189-209.

1995: Alexandra Harmon, “Lines in the Sand: Shifting Boundaries between Indians and Non-Indians in the Puget Sound Region,” Winter 1995, 429-53.

1994: Christina Klein, “‘Everything of interest in the late Pine Ridge War are held by us for sale’: Popular Culture and Wounded Knee,” Spring 1994, 45-68.

1993: Gunther Peck, “Padrones and Protest: ‘Old’ Radicals and ‘New’ Immigrants in Bingham, Utah, 1905-1912,” May 1993, 157-78.

1992: David W. Stowe, “Jazz in the West: Cultural Frontier and Region During the Swing Era,” February 1992, 52-73.

1991: Robert R. Treviño, “Prensa y Patria: The Spanish-Language Press and the Biculturation of the Tejano Middle Class, 1920-1940,” November 1991, 451-72.

1990: Kevin Allen Leonard, “‘Is That What We Fought For?’ Japanese Americans and Racism in California, The Impact of World War II,” November 1990, 463-82.

1989: Charles E. Rankin, “Teaching Opportunity and Limitation for Wyoming Women,” May 1990, 147-70.

1988: William F. Deverell, “To Loosen the Safety Valve: Eastern Workers and Western Lands,” August 1988, 269-85.

1987: None Awarded.

1986: Kenneth J. Bindas, “Western Mystic: Bob Nolan and His Songs,” October 1986, 439-56.

1985: Joseph B. Herring, “Tragedy on the Osage,” April 1986, 185-200.

1984: David Rich Lewis, “Argonauts and the Overland Trail Experience: Method and Theory,” July 1985, 285-305.

1983: Douglas R. Littlefield, “Water Rights During the California Gold Rush: Conflicts Over Economic Points of View,” October 1983, 415-34.