Hoosiers: A New History of Indiana

by James H. Madison

Who are the people called Hoosiers? What are their stories? Two centuries ago, on the Indiana frontier, they were settlers who created a way of life they passed to later generations. They came to value individual freedom and distrusted government, even as they demanded that government remove Indians, sell them land, and bring democracy. Down to the present, Hoosiers have remained wary of government power and have taken care to guard their tax dollars and their personal independence. Yet the people of Indiana have always accommodated change, exchanging log cabins and spinning wheels for railroads, cities, and factories in the 19th century, automobiles, suburbs, and foreign investment in the 20th. The present has brought new issues and challenges, as Indiana's citizens respond to a rapidly changing world. James H. Madison's sparkling new history tells the stories of these Hoosiers, offering an invigorating view of one of America's distinctive states and the long and fascinating journey of its people.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, School

424 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2014

About the author

James H. Madison is the Thomas and Kathryn Miller Professor of History Emeritus, Indiana University Bloomington. Madison serves on the boards of Indiana Humanities and the Indiana Historical Society and is a member of the Indiana Bicentennial Commission. He began teaching Indiana history in 1976 and has lectured and consulted widely on Indiana topics.

Reviews

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main textbook for my Indiana History class this semester.

I enjoyed reading this, I learned quite a bit about the state next door. I likely would have never picked this up if I had not taken the class. It's your basic history book it touches on the geologic history of the state before discussing a bit of the Native American history of the state. It finishes with how the state was changing in the early 2000s. As always my favorite parts were when the state was a part of the frontier and the Civil War era. I recommend this book as a good starting point if you want to know more about Indiana.

[Tim Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a good, very readable overview of Indiana history. This is the second book dedicated to the history of a particular state I have read in the last few years, the other being _Michigan: A History of Explorers, Entrepreneurs, and Everyday People_ by Roger L. Rosentreter, the Michigan book having a number of similarities to this one though I found _Hoosiers_ had a big more engaging writing style, a slightly more advanced writing level, and was a bit more thematic in its approach, coming back to certain historical and cultural traits in Indiana again and again.

After an introduction where among other things, the origin of the term Hoosier is pondered (there seems to be no agreed upon origin or meaning to the word, but “was widely used both in conversation and in print by the early 1830s,” often appearing as Hoosher or Hooshier), there are sixteen chapters detailing the history of the state, each dedicated to a certain time period, era, or the government and politics of a certain stretch of time.

Chapter one is the obligatory chapter on Indiana before the arrival of Native Americans and then before the arrival of the Americans. The section on geology is quite brief though important for understanding regional differences in Indiana history and economy (the northern two-thirds of Indiana was covered by the last of the Ice Age glaciers – the Wisconsin Glacier- which gave that portion of the state flat or gently rolling terrain and fertile soil, ideal for later crops of corn and beans, while lands that were never glaciated are hilly, wooded, uplands with much less fertile soil, attractive to early settlers but in the long run “less suited to commercial agriculture and to the construction of railroads”). I love an early passage in the chapter, speaking to how intimately connected to corn the state and its people are, “In the beginning was corn, and all was good.”

Lots of other topics covered in the first chapter, from the rise and fall of deer populations, the decline of bison, that there were four different periods of Native American settlement, that there is no connection apparently between “the prehistoric people who lived in Indiana before 1600” and “the historic Indians who were observed and encountered by white Europeans and American colonists,” as the “major historic Indians, the Miamis and the Potawatomis, did not settle Indiana until the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century.” As this chapter was titled “The Place and People before the Americans,” time is spent on the French settlers of what would become Indiana, noting among other things that the French colonists had “a European-style cooperative and communal land system, radically different from that of the Americans.” Largely concentrated around modern-day Vincennes, they mostly faded away in the nineteenth century, largely “leaving only a few place names (e.g. Versailles, Dubois, Terra Haute), all pronounced in a distinctly non-French style.”

Chapter two was on the first decades of Americans in Indiana, covering both the time under the British flag and in the early years of the American flag. The chapter focused on three challenges in the territory for American colonists, “problems of Indian-white conflict, of land acquisition and disposition, and of democratic government.” The first problem was a protracted issue and one of the most immediate for years, as the Native Americans insisted that “there be no white settlement north of the Ohio” River.

One aspect of the first chapter I would have liked to have seen expanded upon was the legacy of George Rogers Clark, celebrated in “the early twentieth century…as Indiana’s greatest hero,” his veneration culminated in an enormous Roman-style temple in Vincennes and part of the National Park Service, but notes that he should be seen as “more human and less the bronze statue of a one-dimensional conqueror,” that Clark’s achievements “should be seen in a “broader context…to include brutality and cold-blooded murder by whites as well as Indians.” Still overall decent coverage of Clark and his importance but just a paragraph or two on his legacy today.

Chapter three covered the time period of 1800 to 1816, prior to Indiana becoming a state, discussing settlement patterns (confined to a “crescent-shaped toehold” for years due to “Indian resistance to white expansion”), William Henry Harrison (governor of the Indiana territory from 1800 to 1812, his role especially as a negotiator with Native Americans for their land vital to the state’s history), the saga of Tenskwatawa and his brother Tecumseh, and the final breaking of the power of Indian resistance (which didn’t break as often thought at the Battle of Tippecanoe but instead at the Battle of the Thames, north of Lake Erie, when Harrison meet Tecumseh in battle, Tecumseh dying on the battlefield).

A lot of the chapter was also devoted to the early years of the history of slavery Indiana, covering such things as Harrison’s efforts to repeal portions of the Northwest Ordinance to make slavery legal in Indiana, efforts by legislators to have slaves be “indentured servants” for periods of time that would exceed one’s life expectancy, regional differences in opposition to slavery (strongest in the upland areas of southeastern Indiana), and that opposition to slavery might have little to do with concern for the welfare of the slaves themselves, as rather it might be fears over competition from slave labor or a general opposition to haughty, opulent lifestyles of slave owners, such as those of Harrison and his associates in Vincennes, not well liked by opponents especially in the southeastern part of the territory. Even many who opposed slavery still did not want free blacks settling nearby.

Chapter four, “On the Indiana Frontier,” discussed the different waves of settlement in Indiana and where they were from (“with southerners most heavily congregated in the southern part of Indiana, mid-Atlantic peoples in the central region, and New Englanders in the northern part,” though noting that “Indiana’s white southern population was not from the tidewater, slave-owning South” but were “from the upland South, particularly Virginia and North Carolina” at first and later Tennessee and Kentucky). With a large population with roots in the South, Indiana has long been “the most southern of northern states,” though the author points out that “Indiana did not sanction slavery, nor was there any doubt about which side it would fight on in 1861.” Most of the chapter was devoted to pioneer life, including the buildings they lived in, what they ate, gender roles, child rearing, what medicine and medical practices they had access to, and how they made a living.

Chapter five had a pair of sentences early on that pretty much summed up the chapter:

“Isolated farmers were subsistence farmers. Breaking down that isolation was the single most important public goal in the period between statehood and the Civil War.”

This chapter covered so much, from the use of rivers for transportation to flatboats to keelboats to steamboats to canals, most things having to do with water (also covered were mills to grind corn and wheat). A central feature of the chapter to me was the saga of the Mammoth Internal Improvements Act of 1836 (yes apparently Mammoth was in the title), “the most daring piece of legislation passed in the history of the state,” a bill that provided for pretty much all the things, including three major canal projects, a macadamized road from New Albany to Vincennes, removal of obstructions on the Wabash River, survey of a land route from Jeffersonville to Crawfordsville, and a railroad from Madison to Lafayette via Indianapolis. All of this be authorized by a $10 million appropriation to be borrowed at 5 percent. The project ending with the Butler Bill of 1847, the whole saga is “often labeled the internal improvements debacle,” the author quoting a contemporary writer, saying the whole idea “was conceived in madness and nourished by delusion,” the entire endeavor “unrealistic, naïve, and foolish.”

Issues with the saga aside and why it failed, the story of this ambitious series of projects was according to the author key to shaping Indiana politics for years to come, that the debacle “contributed greatly to the shaping of a more conservative outlook in Indiana, a reluctance to venture actively into the public arena, a tendency of Hoosiers to prefer limited state government and a laissez-faire economics, to allow the marketplace and private enterprise to allocate resources and to define the general welfare,” a general trait that the author points to again and again in his history of the Hoosier state.

Chapter six, “Pioneers and a Better Life,” dealt with the religious make up of Hoosiers in the first half or so of the nineteenth century, how Hoosiers viewed the slave trade and abolition, the Underground Railroad, the idea of colonization (supporters “believed that racial equality was undesirable or impossible and that removal, as with Native Americans, was the only solution,” in this case sending emancipated slaves back to Africa), the fact that “[o]vershadowing the feeble antislavery sentiment was strong race prejudice” in the state (noting prohibitions against African Americans testifying in court, marrying a white person, and among other things the very poor treatment abolitionist Frederick Douglas received when visiting Richmond in 1843). The chapter closed out with information on two utopian groups that existed in Indiana, the Harmonists or Rappites and the Owenites, both of which settled in New Harmony in the southwestern corner of the state.

Chapter seven, “Pioneer Government and Politics,” was kind of a grim chapter, spending a lot of time on the very poor treatment of Native Americans (such as the Trail of Death, when in 1838 some eight hundred Potawatomis were marched to Kansas under armed guard, with 42 dying due to poor planning, sickness, and hardship), a “[r]uthlessly applied patronage system” which became a corrupt spoils system for whatever party was in charge after an election (though to be fair this was hardly unique to Indiana), the relative absence of women from stories of pioneer times (when appearing they appear “usually as mothers”), and the rise of “feel-good history” or “comfort history,” as by 1900 there was a strong belief in the pioneer myth, that while there many values from pioneer times that should be admired, there were other values that should be remembered that are maybe not so laudable; that while pioneers fiercely believed in individual rights and freedoms, they could also be fans of intense partisan politics, that while they valued family life and limited government, could be notoriously opposed to paying taxes for public schools (a subject the author came to again and again) or much-needed transportation projects. In general he wrote Hoosiers would be rather conservative, that “[a]dvocates of change would have a hard road in Indiana…Always there was a commonplace wisdom attributed to pioneers: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” or “good enough is good enough.”

Chapter eight was dedicate to the Civil War, Madison noting again that though anti-slavery, Indiana was still rather racist at the time, noting that “[m]ore than those of most northern states, Indiana’s laws limited the rights of blacks,” that while in general not necessarily fans of slavery there were even those who opposed the abolition of slavery for other reasons (Indiana Democrats for instance believed that a “government potent enough to abolish slavery might also threaten the rights of the states and the liberties of individuals”). Nevertheless Indiana sent 197,141 men out of 300,000 military age individuals in the state, making Indiana second among the northern states in the relative size of their manpower contributions. Other things covered included the Copperheads (some of whom wanted to withdraw Indiana from the union and with Illinois and Ohio form a Northwest Confederacy; I would have liked more information on this lunacy), Oliver P. Morton (“remains the most powerful, important, and controversial governor in Indiana’s history”), and a raid in 1863 across the Ohio River into southern Indiana by Confederate general John Hunt Morgan, who expecting to be aided by Southern sympathizers, instead was met with “scorn, resistance, and gunfire.”

Chapter nine covered the period 1850 to 1920, subjects discussed including the coming of the railroad, the rise of big businesses and enormous factories, the rapid industrialization of several part of the state, the author noting that while manufacturing in Indiana grew more rapidly than in the nation as a whole, relative to other areas of the Old Northwest lagged somewhat, perhaps due to “a stronger attachment to farming and to traditional rural values,” or maybe there was a role played by the “population’s upland South origins and initial settlement in Indiana.”

While chapter nine looked at the economy, chapter ten looked at the culture from 1850-1920. Madison noted that “Hoosiers were remarkably alike,” that more so that maybe any other state, “they were American born, white, and Protestant,” that “by 1920 95 percent were native born, 97 percent were white.” Other topics covered the immigrant communities that nevertheless existed (especially German), the rather poor quality and funding of Indiana schools (with often fierce resistance to state or federal mandates for such things as compulsory schooling, graded classrooms, or approved textbooks), “two giants of Indiana literature” (poet James Whitcomb Riley and novelist Booth Tarkington), the Hoosier group of painters (centered around “Five Hoosier Painters,” coming to prominence with an 1894 exhibition in Chicago), and once again noting that Hoosiers didn’t really embrace rapid or deep change, that rural “and small-town Indiana especially evolved gradually, sometimes imperceptibly,” that many whistled in the dark and hoped “that the gremlins of change would just go away.”

Chapter eleven covered politics from 1873-1920. It was interesting reading about how intensely partisan the average voters in Indiana were (voting straight ticket pretty much all the time) but also how evenly divided the two parties were overall (the winning party in this time period seldom claimed over 51 percent of the vote). In this chapter Madison covered how often a Hoosier was on a national party ticket (six times as Vice President, once as President), the use of “floaters” (men who sold their votes to the highest bidder, easier to proven to have been done before the advent of secret voting in 1889), the state’s successful efforts to stamp out lynching, how in 1899 Indiana was one of the first states to pass a pure food and drug law, how sadly Indiana in 1907 Indiana passed the nation’s first eugenics law, and the history of the temperance movement.

Chapter twelve, “Flappers and Klansmen Challenge Traditions: The 1920s” was a good read. Lots covered, such as the “dismantling and quiet burial of a culture,” in this case Kurt Vonnegut’s description of how patriotism during World War I erased a lot of the presence of German language, music, and culture from Indiana, the story (all to brief in my opinion) of the Indiana music scene in the 1920s, a great deal of the fascinating history of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, discussing how widespread it was, how it manifested itself, its origin, even discussing the different Klans in American history (the chapter focusing on the second Klan, that of the 1920s, “radically different from the first and third,” the third being the one that formed in the 1960s). It was interesting to read that at one point the second Klan encompassed perhaps one-quarter or more of the state’s native-born white men (as well as thousands of women), yet Madison noted that there “is not a single documented Klan lynching in Indiana” and nor “is there a known Klan murder of any sort…[v]iolence was not the Klan way.” I found that astonishing and while Madison didn’t at all defend the Klan (and took great care to note the many in opposition to the Klan at the time, such as the Indiana Bar Association, several Protestant denominations, a number of major newspapers, and the Knights of Columbus) he did note how pervasive and influential it was for a time in Indiana, mainly becoming undone due to its leadership’s ineptness, as behind “the screen of the Klan’s machine were corrupt windbags and bungling fools, squabbling among themselves for money and power” (this especially in reference to the rise and precipitous fall of Klan leader D.C. Stephenson, who once boasted he was the most powerful man in Indiana but ended up in prison).

Chapter thirteen was another great read, covering how the Great Depression and World War II affected Hoosiers. Topics covered included the immense power and influence of Governor Paul V. McNutt (close associated of FDR, reformed a great many things in the state and for a time flirted with running for the White House until FDR decided to run for a third term in 1940, and sadly his enormous expansion of political patronage and formation of the Two Percent Club, whereby all state employees paid 2 percent of their salary to the party). Also covered are the isolationist tendencies of Indiana prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor and some of the work (all to briefly discussed) of two Hoosiers, Kurt Vonnegut and Ernie Pyle.

Chapter fourteen dealt a lot with twentieth century changes to Indiana brought about by technology and industrialization, spending a lot of time on automobile manufacturing (in 1919 there were 172 “Indiana establishments manufacturing automobiles and auto parts and more than thirty Indiana towns with a stake in the new industry” though in the end the Big Three in Detroit put out the last of the Indiana automobile manufacturers, with Haynes, Apperson, and Cole going out of business in the mid-1920s, Duesenberg succumbing in the 1930s, and Studebaker going out of business in 1964). Madison also spent time on “creative destruction,” how the movement of capital to different locations, often overseas, producing a lot of change in Indiana, and did not neglect to discuss Indiana agriculture as well as by the mid-twentieth century owing to technological and other changes farms that once produced a variety of crops switched over to just corn and soybeans.

Chapter fifteen dealt with twentieth and twenty-first century politics, discussing how most Indiana governors historically were rather weak, how relatively tolerant Hoosiers have been of campaign contributions but not tax increases, the saga of desegregation in Indiana, and briefly how Indiana was slow in creating community colleges.

The final chapter, chapter sixteen, noted that despite Hoosier’s reluctance to raise taxes for the public good they donate a lot of time and money to many charities (listing a number of them) and very briefly praised some of Indiana’s freethinkers like Alfred Kinsey (the sex and gender researcher) and Gene Deb and Madam C.J. Walker (who “challenged basic assumptions about class and capitalism”).

One of the last paragraphs was memorable:

“Hoosiers made many smart choices in responding to change. They created the most abundant cornfields in the world, the most productive manufacturing assembly lines, and the best basketball teams. They also once claimed that only white men should vote, that the Ku Klux Klan was a great Christian reform movement, and that canals were better investment than railroads. Some believed in things that never were, a history without tensions, a past that venerated cozy log cabins and pleasantly humming spinning wheels.”

Lots of black and white and color illustrations and maps and an extensive section of end notes, further reading, and index. I liked how throughout the book Madison addressed issues and traits of Hoosier culture and pol

[Nazareth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This very fine history of the Hoosier State is, at its best, also a genealogy of Indiana's current political, cultural and social character on the eve of the state's bicentennial in 2016. It gave this new resident of the nineteenth state a much more critical understanding of my new home.

[Jeff Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably haven't done much study on Indiana history since 4th grade (not even sure I did then) but after being born, traveling and living here for most of my life I think I have a good perspective on this state. Madison does a really good job of capturing the feel of Indiana politics and culture. He portrays the Hoosier state as slow to adapt to change (evolutionary rather than revolutionary). Some of the stories he tells carry such a familiarity with my experience of this state. Some of my favorite quotes and things of note for me:

p. 55-With good reason, pioneers developed a strong sense of optimism, a conviction that progress was natural, and a confidence that this was the best that America had to offer. Near the end of their lives, many would reflect on their decision to move to the Indiana frontier as proof of God's blessing and as a guarantee that their lives and those of their children were better as a consequence.

p. 58-Many Quakers settled in eastern Indiana. It was no accident that so did free blacks. By 1850 Wayne County had the state's largest number of Quaker churches and the largest number of African Americans.

[Madison divides the states into thirds-northern, central and southern)
p. 61-Each of the three major settlement groups brought with them a distinctive culture. That of southern Indiana was the most distinct. Upland southern patterns of word usage and pronunciation, religion, place names, food, amusement, and methods of constructing barns, houses, and corn cribs were firmly implanted in southern Indiana by 1820.

p. 62-Yankees could become impatient with southerners who seemed lazy and backward. An extreme example was the Hoosier politician Godlove Orth, who wrote from Lafayette in 1845 that "the enterprising Yankee of Northern Indiana, despises the sluggish and inanimate North Carolinian, Virginian and Kentuckian in the Southern part of the state.

p. 62-Indiana's southern born population was larger in both absolute and relative size than that of any other state in the Old Northwest, a central element in the claim that Indiana was the most southern of northern states. Yet Indiana did not sanction slavery, nor was there any doubt about which side it would fight on in 1861. [While positively stating Indiana's position on slavery here, Madison notes on other occasions how slow Hoosiers were to embrace civil rights].

p. 69-Throughout the year, a day seldom passed that a pioneer family did not eat pork. As a symbol of Indiana's pioneer era, the hog deserves top billing alongside the log cabin. Today's celebrated pork tenderloin sandwich provides a secular form of communion at the ancient Hoosier altar.

p. 70-Although at least one traveler among Hoosiers was moved to plead, "Deliver me from their cookery," many an aged pioneer, especially if from the upland South, went to the grave convinced that there was no better meal on earth than a piece of salt pork, boiled beans, and cornbread. [I remember many meals of "soup beans and cornbread" and am glad to hear that I wasn't the only one who didn't like it.]

p. 84-Fort Wayne, Peru, Logansport, Delphi, and Lafayette owed much of their growth to the Wabash and Erie Canal. The Whitewater Canal, completed in 1846 and operated by a private company, was not as successful, but it too contributed to the profits of farmers in the region and to the development of towns such as Connersville, Brookville, and Lawrenceburg. Neither of these canals was profitable to investors, and both were plagued by low water levels, floods, deteriorating banks, and rotting locks, but they did contribute to the economic growth of the regions they served.

p. 85-The pioneer generation that appropriated $10 million to revolutionize transportation at a time when the state's annual revenues averaged less than $75,000 took a risk. They lost and looked foolish in the end, but only in the end. At the outset one must appreciate the forward-looking optimism, the belief in progress, the intense desire to lift Indiana out of the mud and leave behind the isolation of pioneer life.

p. 197-Some German newcomers were Jewish. Hints of antisemitism appeared, but in Indianapolis, Wabash, and elsewhere, Jews and Christians mixed socially and in business, though they seldom intermarried. There were a few unusual Jewish communities, including the small town of Ligonier in Noble County which by the end of the century was known as a "Little Jerusalem."

p. 201-And important reason for the short cultural distance from rural to urban Indiana was the existence of a midway place between the big city and the isolated farm. Small towns dotted the landscape and shaped much of the state's character. Neither urban nor rural, they provided the agricultural hinterland with essential economic, social, and political services: a few retail stores and a grain elevator; a high school and three or four churches; lawyers, doctors, fraternal lodges, and women's clubs; and often the county courthouse and weekly newspaper. They were the proverbial neighborly places where nearly everyone was known by name to nearly everyone else, where all important communication was face to face, where life could be secure and comfortable for many and stultifying and provincial for some.

p. 225-In other states, eugenics crusaders targeted new immigrants and African Americans. In Indiana it was more often poor whites who were deemed biologically unfit. Southern Indiana proved rich ground for the Committee on Mental Defectives. [I just had to point out this last sentence to my wife, a northerner, who is often at a loss when we visit my hometown of southeastern Indiana)

p. 336-Basketball was the perfect game for small-town Indiana. Only five boys needed to show up. The high school game was an event of frenzied proportions by the mid-twentieth century. At one point the state boasted fifteen of the nation's sixteen largest high school gymnasiums. In these Hoosier cathedrals on a cold Friday night, fans created a warm community focused around the home team. Everyone talked basketball. Kids shot baskets outdoors, in barns, in public parks, and in all kinds of weather. Indiana was proud to be "the land of great pure shooters." The story of Bobby Plump's game-winning shot for Milan in 1954 is Indiana's greatest sports story. A school with only seventy-five boys knocked off a series of big-city schools one after the other to become the state champs. Recited like a church ritual, the Milan miracle was memorialized in the film Hoosiers, written and directed by two Indiana fans not old enough to have seen the game.

p. 337-Pork tenderloin sandwiches remained hard to resist, especially in the many small-town cafes were the fried breaded pork extended far beyond the bun.

[Mason Wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for all Hoosiers. Madison’s version of Indiana history is both enlightening and excellent, starting from the first documented history of Indiana Territory Natives in the 1600’s, to Mike Pence’s election as State Governor in 2013. In between, pioneer, agrarian, and industrial Hoosier stories are told, with elements of politics, evangelicalism, racism, and Hoosier pop culture sprinkled in. The addition of maps, photographs, and figures throughout the book helps tremendously in envisioning the history of the Hoosier spirit. Founded on the principles of conservatism and Protestantism, the State of Indiana is inhabited by the shared collective imagination of Hoosiers and their general “distrust in government” and “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” attitudes that have shaped and continue to shape the political, social, and economic landscape of Indiana today.

Being a born and raised Hoosier native to the South Bend area, this book especially hits home. Personally, after reading this book, Eugene V. Debs has become my favorite Hoosier of all time. His courageous socialist philosophies and fighting spirit help illuminate that while Hoosiers are timeless and traditional people, there is always a place for revolutionary Hoosiers in evolutionary Indiana.

[Nelson Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, although I'll caveat that by stating that I'm an Indiana native, I can't speak to the appeal beyond that. The only reason this didn't get 5 stars from me is that there were a few bits where the author got a bit "preachy" regarding (what I assume is) his own world view and some of the admittedly checkered history relative to both politics, segregation and native Americans as well. In my opinion, history is what it is, and if you try to view through a lens that imparts today's knowledge and/or values against it - most of it will naturally look bleaker than it seemed at the time. It's important to remember that most of those "wrongs" were ultimately corrected as a function of societal change (ie, slavery, women's suffrage, etc.). By way of comparison - most medical treatments, including emergency treatments, that were either standard or considered "state of the art" or "leading edge" in the 1700's and 1800's would easily be considered malpractice today - that being the case, it's not necessary to deride or berate those from that previous era who were doing the best they knew how to do at the time.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have not really studied Indiana history since it was mandated in 4th grade. I learned many details about my home state, and it explains alot about the attitude you still see in many Hoosiers. While I believe the author was more honest about how Native Americans were treated, I felt he was less honest about Indiana's history with African Americans and the Klan. I did not appriciate that he would make a reference about one individuals personal experience or event but not elaborate. I know more then I ever did about rhe history of my home state.

[Lucy McCoskey · Rating 3 out of 5]

very comprehensive and interesting, but it reads like a textbook

[Duane Nickell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very readable history of the state of Indiana. Excellent!

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good basic book on Indiana history

[Matt Barton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It’s extremely approachable, easy to understand, and really helped fill in a lot of gaps in my knowledge of Indiana history.

[Tommy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid crash course in Indiana history. Very readable

[Del Doughty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book and benefited from it when I moved back to Indiana

[R. Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book touches on just about every facet of Indiana history and is written by the utmost authority.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Project Read-a-History-of-Every-State-in-Order-of-Statehood #19

[A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fantastic. I wish it had some more social history in it, but it was really quite a fantastic overview of Indiana history, with frank analysis and a love of affection too.

[Paul Lunger · Rating 5 out of 5]

With "Hoosiers: A New History of Indiana", James Madison goes into the history of the Hoosier state & the various quirks that make this state what it is. As a native of the state next door, there are a lot of similarities

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book almost entirely uneducated on Indiana history, but after living here for over a decade now, it was time to learn what makes Hoosiers tick. This was a great source to do so. Madison writes in an approachable way, the information building like layers of a story rather than in dry, static, fodder for curing insomnia. Throughout my reading I was genuinely curious about what happened next. It gave me more than a few "aha!" moments as new light was shed as to the whys and whats and hows of certain cultural phenomenon this outsider has observed of Indiana and its people.

But is this a book just for Hoosiers and Indiana transplants like me? Nah. Not if you're genuinely interested in American history as a whole or even a nice cross-section of the psychological and cultural development of people in general. We all have a little historian, psychologist, anthropologist or gossip within us. This history is for anyone, and Madison makes it approachable reading for everyone. This is not your dusty brick of a textbook you lugged to Social Studies class in high school. This history book I actually enjoyed curled up with a cup of cocoa and a cat on my lap. Yes, really.

[Jene · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent overview of Indiana history. More thematic than decade-specific, this book lends a greater understanding to the great themes of Hoosiers confronting change over time, and our place in the greater history of the US.

[Jay C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great summary of Indiana history and very readable for non-fiction. Liked everything but the chapters on indiana politics, but even they were educational and somewhat interesting. Highly recommended.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It was assigned reading for a class, but it's not dry like other textbooks. The language is conversational and the subject matter is interesting. I gained a lot of insight into my home state and what shaped it.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good summary of Indiana history and culture.

[Jim Blessing · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw the author of this book discuss it at a program at the local library. It was an excellent presentation and I then got the book at the library. It was an outstanding book on Indiana history.