Organized by topic, it encourages readers to reflect upon the region as a whole. Each section moves from the general to the specific, covering broad themes in longer introductory essays, filling in the details in the shorter entries that follow. There are portraits of each of the region''s twelve states, followed by entries on society and culture, community and social life, economy and technology, and public life. The book offers a wealth of information about the region''s surprising ethnic diversity-a vast array of foods, languages, styles, religions, and customs-plus well-informed essays on the region''s history, culture and values, and conflicts. A site of ideas and innovations, reforms and revivals, and social and physical extremes, the Midwest emerges as a place of great complexity, signal importance, and continual fascination.
^ (2006). The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (Midwestern History and Culture), Indiana University Press. Amazon. ISBN 9780253348869 (revised Nov 2014)
This book does contain a great deal of information, but also some rather silly sentiments. Contributor Jennifer Crets, for instance, remarks that small towns in Missouri "make time travel possible." Oh well, it does have a Bob Dylan quote on the back cover.
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 th..
