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Remaking the heartland : Middle America since the 1950s / Robert Wuthnow.

by Wuthnow, Robert.

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Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2011.

Agriculture -- Middle West.

Social change -- Middle West.

Community development -- Middle West.

Agriculture -- Economic aspects -- Middle West.

Middle West -- Economic conditions.

Middle West -- Social conditions.

9780691158020 (pbk.) :

9780691146119 (hardback : alk. paper)

069114611X (hardback : alk. paper)

xiii, 358 p. ; 24 cm.

Here in the middle -- Recovering from the Great Depression -- Reinventing the rustic life -- Education in Middle America -- The decline of small communities -- The changing face of agribusiness -- From towns to sprawling suburbs.

This book is a study of the fifty years starting in the 1950s in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. For many Americans, the Midwest is a vast unknown. In this book the author sets out to rectify this. He shows how the region has undergone extraordinary social transformations over the past half-century and proven itself surprisingly resilient in the face of such hardships as the Great Depression and the movement of residents to other parts of the country. He examines the heartland's reinvention throughout the decades and traces the social and economic factors that have helped it to survive and prosper. He points to the critical strength of the region's social institutions established between 1870 and 1950 including the market towns, farmsteads, one-room schoolhouses, townships, rural cooperatives, and manufacturing centers that have adapted with the changing times. He focuses on farmers' struggles to recover from the Great Depression well into the 1950s, the cultural redefinition and modernization of the region's image that occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, the growth of secondary and higher education, the decline of small towns, the redeployment of agribusiness, and the rapid expansion of edge cities. Drawing his arguments from extensive interviews and evidence from the towns and counties of the Midwest, he provides a unique perspective as both an objective observer and someone who grew up there. His book offers a look at the humble yet strong foundations that have allowed the region to endure undiminished.

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