a surprising page turner, November 17, 2010

I, like almost all coastal people, assumed the Midwest is flyover and drive-through territory, boring, uncultured, a pleasant but somewhat unfortunate site of floods, droughts, blights, and tornadoes.One day, I decided that it was time to stop accepting the common myths re a huge and vast region. It was the same day I accepted that New York and California are not all that - rather, the coasts rely so much on Midwestern foodstuffs and brain drain labor force (try counting all the Ohioans in New York, and the Iowans and Minnesotans in Los Angeles). And some of the most interesting people are from the Midwest (Willa Cather, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Richard Widmark, Abbey Lincoln, Toni Morrison, Garrison Keillor, Prince, Stevie Wonder...).This volume is an excellent guide, for both introductory and in depth studies, divided by subject area. I most enjoyed the state by state "generalizations" breakdown (what's true and not true about stereotypes per...