Martha A. Sandweiss is professor emerita of history at Princeton University, where she is founding director of the Princeton & Slavery Project. She is the award-winning author of many books, including Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception across the Color Line and Print the Legend: Photography and the American West.

"A masterful reading of this one photograph. . . . An exemplary case of the potential of the visual turn in the humanities and social science to develop new methods of historical analysis. While the photograph preserves a fleeting moment, Sandweiss moves it from the illustrative sidelines to become the centerpiece of evidence in its own story."---Joanna Sassoon, Journal of Historical Geography --- "Insightful and beautifully written. . . . propulsive and compelling. . . . [The Girl in the Middle] speaks to the importance of the historical work of recovery, especially in our current moment."---Megan Kate Nelson, Emerging Civil War --- "A perceptive historical inquiry, The Girl in the Middle illuminates the post–Civil War era’s dark negotiations surrounding Native American land."---Karen Rigby, Foreword --- "A masterful work of recovery, reconstruction, and research."---Elizabeth DeWolfe, Journal of Arizona History --- "Riveting. . . . Sandweiss effectively details a previously unknown life and insists that the rest of us could do better."---Anne Hyde, Western Historical Quarterly --- "Fascinating. . . . this book is a model of historical detective work."---Evan C. Rothera, Civil War Monitor --- "If all books were like The Girl in the Middle, perhaps more undergraduates would become history majors. . . . Highly recommended." --- "Sandweiss. . . shows her extraordinary ability as a historian-detective."---David Steinberg, Albuquerque Journal --- "Compelling. . . . A truly revealing image of American empire." --- "Sandweiss’s forensic investigation of a single photograph widens the aperture to depict an astonishingly intertwined frontier society where everyone—soldier, trader, photographer, man, woman, Native, mixed-race, or white—was connected to most everyone else. The result is a fascinating snapshot of this “oddly intimate” world, a bubbling cauldron of people constantly on the move, in contact or in conflict, their lives beset by unremitting public and familial violence."---Alix Christie, American Scholar --- "Part detective story, part traditional history book, The Girl in the Middle brings to life an often overlooked part of US history. . . . A richly textured view of America both during and in the decades directly after its brutal civil war. . . . A window into the lives of ordinary people at a time and in a place when everyone was on the move and constantly reinventing themselves. It is also a testament to the broader suffering that occurred as the American government repeatedly broke its promises to the continent’s original inhabitants."---Brooke Masters, Financial Times --- "[Sandweiss’s] deeply researched book takes its title from an arresting black-and-white photograph of the peace commissioners gathered at Fort Laramie in 1868. . . . Sandweiss is an elegant writer who knows how to craft a satisfying story."---Melanie Kirkpatrick, Wall Street Journal --- "Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize, McGill University"