What do you think?
Rate this book
The Heartland: An American History
A history of a quintessentially American place--the rural and small town heartland--that uncovers deep yet hidden currents of connection with the world.
When Kristin L. Hoganson arrived in Champaign, Illinois, after teaching at Harvard, studying at Yale, and living in the D.C. metro area with various stints overseas, she expected to find her new home, well, isolated. Even provincial. After all, she had landed in the American heartland, a place where the nation's identity exists in its pristine form. Or so we have been taught to believe.
Struck by the gap between reputation and reality, she determined to get to the bottom of history and myth. The deeper she dug into the making of the modern heartland, the wider her story became as she realized that she'd uncovered an unheralded crossroads of people, commerce, and ideas. But the really interesting thing was that over the course of American history, even as the region's connections with the rest of the planet became increasingly dense and intricate, the idea of the rural Midwest as a steadfast heartland became a stronger and more stubbornly immovable myth. In enshrining a symbolic heart, the American people have repressed the kinds of stories that Hoganson tells, of sweeping breadth and depth and soul.
In The Heartland, Kristin L. Hoganson drills deep into the center of the country, only to find a global story in the resulting core sample. A provocative and highly original work of historical scholarship, The Heartland speaks volumes about pressing preoccupations, among them identity and community, immigration and trade, and security and global power. And food. To read it is to be inoculated against using the word "heartland" unironically ever again.
When Kristin L. Hoganson arrived in Champaign, Illinois, after teaching at Harvard, studying at Yale, and living in the D.C. metro area with various stints overseas, she expected to find her new home, well, isolated. Even provincial. After all, she had landed in the American heartland, a place where the nation's identity exists in its pristine form. Or so we have been taught to believe.
Struck by the gap between reputation and reality, she determined to get to the bottom of history and myth. The deeper she dug into the making of the modern heartland, the wider her story became as she realized that she'd uncovered an unheralded crossroads of people, commerce, and ideas. But the really interesting thing was that over the course of American history, even as the region's connections with the rest of the planet became increasingly dense and intricate, the idea of the rural Midwest as a steadfast heartland became a stronger and more stubbornly immovable myth. In enshrining a symbolic heart, the American people have repressed the kinds of stories that Hoganson tells, of sweeping breadth and depth and soul.
In The Heartland, Kristin L. Hoganson drills deep into the center of the country, only to find a global story in the resulting core sample. A provocative and highly original work of historical scholarship, The Heartland speaks volumes about pressing preoccupations, among them identity and community, immigration and trade, and security and global power. And food. To read it is to be inoculated against using the word "heartland" unironically ever again.
432 pages, Paperback
First published April 23, 2019
68 people are currently reading
1163 people want to read
About the author
Kristin L. Hoganson
9 books21 followersKristin Hoganson is a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She specializes in the United States in world context, cultures of U.S. imperialism, and transnational history. She is the author of Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (1998) and Consumers’ Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865-1920 (2007).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 91 reviews
July 30, 2019
Anyone looking to this book for a broad survey of the Midwest, as the title seems to suggest, will undoubtedly be disappointed. What one gets instead is a focused argument, illustrated by an episodic account of interactions with one place in the Midwest, designed to show, insistently and persistently, that the Midwest is not, and never has been, isolated or parochial; instead, it has always had and pursued international connections of all sorts. The book is not broad chronologically, geographically, or topically. Chronologically, it draws its examples from the period from settlement through World War I, especially the 20 years on either side of the turn of the twentieth century. Geographically, it focuses almost exclusively on Champaign County, Illinois, and it is mostly concerned with agricultural issues or the intersection of agriculture and politics. (The last chapter, on Kickapoo struggles to assert their right to cross the U.S.-Mexican border, seems to stretch to link to the rest of the book, though on its own merits it was the chapter that I found the most interesting to read.) Unlike, say, William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis, who gave us broad, illuminating treatments of the production of and trade in grain, meat, and lumber, the details Hoganson includes as examples of international connectedness hardly seem essential to understanding the history of the Midwest. Also, the details are often boring. Furthermore, it’s hardly implausible that these examples could exist alongside as many examples of relative (though certainly not absolute) parochialism and isolation. On the other hand, the book’s argument, presented as if it’s some radical new departure, will hardly surprise most historians of the region, including any who read Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis (now nearly 30 years old!), which included the following notable sentence: "The Iowa farm family who raised corn for cattle purchased from Wyoming and who lived in a farmhouse made of Wisconsin pine clothed themselves with Mississippi cotton that Massachusetts factory workers had woven into fabric, worked their fields with a plow manufactured in Illinois from steel produced in Pennsylvania, and ended their Sunday meal by drinking Venezuelan coffee after enjoying an apple pie made on an Ohio stove from the fruit of a backyard orchard mixed with sugar from Cuba and cinnamon from Ceylon” (310). In some ways, Hoganson’s book is just an expansion of that observation. It has made a splash but, for me, was a dud.
September 17, 2019
I found this intriguing, thought-provoking and wide-ranging exploration of what is actually meant by the term The American Heartland most interesting. It seems to have divided reviewers between those who love it and those who hate it and many criticisms have been made about some of the author's contentions. However, whatever the rights and wrongs of her interpretations of history, it’s a great read. Her main thesis is that contrary to popular opinion the heartland has never been insular and isolationist but has always looked outward and has always been eager to make global connections. In fact the very existence of the heartland depended right from the start on international trade and commerce. The book focuses on Champaign County, Illinois, which for the author is emblematic of the heartland and where she is a Professor of History at the University of Illinois. I can’t comment on the accuracy or otherwise of her claims, but I found the book enlightening and it gave me a whole new perspective on the meaning of that perhaps overused term “heartland”.
June 28, 2019
I had no earthly clue that I needed to know this much about the hidden life of cows. As the daughter of a Wisconsin dairy farmer, I probably should have wondered about the backstory of the family cattle at some point. I didn't. At least not until Kristin Hoganson’s “The Heartland: An American History.” The book reconsiders the history of the Midwest and upends the myths about our national “heartland” as a safe and isolated place, a geographic and symbolic core. The heart of America is a place of empire, shaped by global forces. Hoganson tells the stories of the Kickapoo people, settler colonialism, ornithologists, schools, pigs, drainage systems, agriculture and landscape. It sounds incredibly dry, I know, but it’s revelatory and may alter your ideas of the “local” and your ideas of place. The region so many regard from 37,000 feet -- and see as emerald squares of farmland -- gets weirdly burdened with ideas of the past. It is “the America of America First, the home of homeland security,” writes Hoganson, who unspools much of that. I walked away thinking about all of the boosterish stories that get told about this region and the "friendly" city-to-city rivalries. Now I understand why I cringe. These things are echoes of an antiquarian and not-so-pretty past. I kept thinking about something my midwestern dad often said: It’s high time we face facts. Well, these are the facts. Down cold. It's a fascinating read, and I recommend it.
July 9, 2019
I’m still wrapping my head around why this was such an awful read - premise approached poorly and executed lazily, absolutely awful writing, lack of understanding about the subject - but mostly I’m just angry I wasted time finishing it.
April 18, 2025
Ask me about Berkshire hogs!!
June 2, 2019
The ideas of this book are valuable, though the writing is mediocre. As with many academic projects, I can imagine this book shrunk into two highly interesting New Yorker style articles.
The first article that I'd select from this book would be the creation of the "Heartland." In Hoganson's telling, America arrived at a point when it needed an identity. We can imagine any number of choices for that symbolic heart of the country--why not New York City? Why not New England? Why not the coasts? But the collective choice was made to locate the "heart" of the country in what we think of now as the Midwest (which was once just the West). From there a myth was constructed about isolation and fundamental goodness. A valuable part of this book is the examination of "local history" in chapter 1, were she demonstrates that these books (gathering dust in our libraries) went about setting up European settlers as the true occupants of the land, while Native Americans were dismissed as being ramblers who were never truly settled the land. White European settlers thus produced the quality of the "local" in ways that people passing through and over the land could not.
My second selection for a lengthy essay would be a shorter version of the surprising central chapters on cattle, hogs, and agriculture. Those who founded the cities and towns of the Midwest in the 19th century perceived themselves as part of a global network of food production. They were interested in cattle from Britain and hogs from China and wheat and vegetables from pretty much everywhere. They understood their region not as some fenced in place that had to make do with whatever they had, or a place where they had to "go it alone," but as a region that could be fundamentally transformed by rational progress. Looking in old newspapers from Illinois, Hoganson finds plenty of evidence, in advertisements or short news items, that people in the Midwest imagined themselves as connected to the globe. In fact, they understood well that their prosperity depended on certain government trade policies, and were thus engaged with foreign policy questions.
In her conclusion Hoganson makes use of an image that I particularly liked: "It would take an entire atlas of maps layered on top of one another, transparency style, to convey the far-flung relationships that formed [the heartland]." Though she mentions "transparencies," we know that we are in the realm of Google Earth here, with its map overlays. She helps us to imagine the layers and connections that technology and the Internet has helped us to imagine more readily.
The myth of the local continues to overwrite the connections of the "Heartland" with the rest of the world. As I've walked through county fairs in Wisconsin and looked at the cattle and pigs, I don't recall seeing signs explaining the foreign origin of these animals or the export of them to foreign places. There's rather a sense that hearty young men and women have raised these American creatures, and as good Americans we make use of these creatures. Global connections are not self-evident, and it's far easier to imagine self-sufficiency. We should make a collective effort to draw out the global. Even at county fairs, we should follow Hoganson's lead and trace breeds back to the Netherlands, or wherever they came from. We should point to the countries where all that soy and corn will wind up. Collectively we have allowed this myth of the Heartland to go unchecked, and we are paying the price now in every way.
The first article that I'd select from this book would be the creation of the "Heartland." In Hoganson's telling, America arrived at a point when it needed an identity. We can imagine any number of choices for that symbolic heart of the country--why not New York City? Why not New England? Why not the coasts? But the collective choice was made to locate the "heart" of the country in what we think of now as the Midwest (which was once just the West). From there a myth was constructed about isolation and fundamental goodness. A valuable part of this book is the examination of "local history" in chapter 1, were she demonstrates that these books (gathering dust in our libraries) went about setting up European settlers as the true occupants of the land, while Native Americans were dismissed as being ramblers who were never truly settled the land. White European settlers thus produced the quality of the "local" in ways that people passing through and over the land could not.
My second selection for a lengthy essay would be a shorter version of the surprising central chapters on cattle, hogs, and agriculture. Those who founded the cities and towns of the Midwest in the 19th century perceived themselves as part of a global network of food production. They were interested in cattle from Britain and hogs from China and wheat and vegetables from pretty much everywhere. They understood their region not as some fenced in place that had to make do with whatever they had, or a place where they had to "go it alone," but as a region that could be fundamentally transformed by rational progress. Looking in old newspapers from Illinois, Hoganson finds plenty of evidence, in advertisements or short news items, that people in the Midwest imagined themselves as connected to the globe. In fact, they understood well that their prosperity depended on certain government trade policies, and were thus engaged with foreign policy questions.
In her conclusion Hoganson makes use of an image that I particularly liked: "It would take an entire atlas of maps layered on top of one another, transparency style, to convey the far-flung relationships that formed [the heartland]." Though she mentions "transparencies," we know that we are in the realm of Google Earth here, with its map overlays. She helps us to imagine the layers and connections that technology and the Internet has helped us to imagine more readily.
The myth of the local continues to overwrite the connections of the "Heartland" with the rest of the world. As I've walked through county fairs in Wisconsin and looked at the cattle and pigs, I don't recall seeing signs explaining the foreign origin of these animals or the export of them to foreign places. There's rather a sense that hearty young men and women have raised these American creatures, and as good Americans we make use of these creatures. Global connections are not self-evident, and it's far easier to imagine self-sufficiency. We should make a collective effort to draw out the global. Even at county fairs, we should follow Hoganson's lead and trace breeds back to the Netherlands, or wherever they came from. We should point to the countries where all that soy and corn will wind up. Collectively we have allowed this myth of the Heartland to go unchecked, and we are paying the price now in every way.
October 5, 2021
Now that I have read it, I'm sad that I still have to give this book 3(.5) stars out of 5 rather than 4 out of 5 because it is actually pretty decent.
I almost put down the book halfway through the introduction because it was so condescending as a born-and-raised, Central Illinois Midwesterner. She states in the introduction that Midwestern interconnection is "apparent from the ground," but neglects to acknowledge that Midwesterners are reading the book--her audience is "our," but Midwesterners are "they." I would have received this book better if it had been written with an expectation of a Midwestern audience, but it is written in terms that make me assume she's reporting back on Midwestern history/culture to her New Englander friends instead.
Hoganson denounces these stereotypes in the text, but her choice of language still showed a similar bias as the one she's fighting against. The end of the introduction was better, but the early condescension left a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the book. It could have been easily avoided if she hadn't used first person/"our" vs "they" and taken a more exacting approach to laying out the book's thesis--or if I had skipped the introduction entirely.
The content itself is fascinating! It is easy to get lost in this book since there are so many threads and anecdotes, which was sometimes good and sometimes bad. There are so many things going on that the book got distracted from it's goal--I asked myself "so what?" way too many times while I was reading it. Sure, I can read between the lines, but it would have been nice if each section was brought bluntly back to 'the point.' I skipped many pages. My favorite chapters (and the chapters I didn't skip through) were 1, 5, and 6. I loved following threads of the many people (and creatures) around the world that formed the Midwest throughout history. The book would have benefited from more reflection on the modern day Midwest.
My favorite quotes are: "But the last joke may be on the joker, for positioning the heartland as a place that can be both literally and figuratively looked down upon reveals another strain of provinciality: the inability to recognize the heartland as a vantage point." (Ironic, since Midwesterners were "they" and the audience was "our" in the introduction, but a great quote.)
"The American heartland is as much a global heartland as a national one--not in the sense of being in the eye of the world but in the sense that it took an entire world to form it."
I almost put down the book halfway through the introduction because it was so condescending as a born-and-raised, Central Illinois Midwesterner. She states in the introduction that Midwestern interconnection is "apparent from the ground," but neglects to acknowledge that Midwesterners are reading the book--her audience is "our," but Midwesterners are "they." I would have received this book better if it had been written with an expectation of a Midwestern audience, but it is written in terms that make me assume she's reporting back on Midwestern history/culture to her New Englander friends instead.
Hoganson denounces these stereotypes in the text, but her choice of language still showed a similar bias as the one she's fighting against. The end of the introduction was better, but the early condescension left a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the book. It could have been easily avoided if she hadn't used first person/"our" vs "they" and taken a more exacting approach to laying out the book's thesis--or if I had skipped the introduction entirely.
The content itself is fascinating! It is easy to get lost in this book since there are so many threads and anecdotes, which was sometimes good and sometimes bad. There are so many things going on that the book got distracted from it's goal--I asked myself "so what?" way too many times while I was reading it. Sure, I can read between the lines, but it would have been nice if each section was brought bluntly back to 'the point.' I skipped many pages. My favorite chapters (and the chapters I didn't skip through) were 1, 5, and 6. I loved following threads of the many people (and creatures) around the world that formed the Midwest throughout history. The book would have benefited from more reflection on the modern day Midwest.
My favorite quotes are: "But the last joke may be on the joker, for positioning the heartland as a place that can be both literally and figuratively looked down upon reveals another strain of provinciality: the inability to recognize the heartland as a vantage point." (Ironic, since Midwesterners were "they" and the audience was "our" in the introduction, but a great quote.)
"The American heartland is as much a global heartland as a national one--not in the sense of being in the eye of the world but in the sense that it took an entire world to form it."
March 6, 2019
The Heartland is a brief snapshot of middle America, focusing primarily on Illinois and the community of Champaign, since the author works at the local university. She begins by addressing all the nicknames for the Midwest, including the flyover states, a label I personally detest because it's denigrating. The Midwest has much to offer and its citizens' values are often scoffed at, but midwesterners are hardy, stable, reliable, and loyal. Hoganson explores the Kickapoo history and the rich agrarian history of the region. Overall, it's a good overview to promote the value of the region. I'm not quite sure why the author felt the need to write it, unless she believed it was necessary to substantiate that the Midwest Is valuable. I am a proud native Midwestern who lives not too far from the primary region focused on in the book and I encourage all readers to explore the vast history and richness of the "middle west."
Thanks to NetGalley for the advance read.
Thanks to NetGalley for the advance read.
June 26, 2019
Hoganson's biases and contempt for the people she is writing about are evident in this book. She is selective in the history and details that she focuses on, examining only the the prejudices and practices of the people of the middle states, without putting them into historical context. She follows the modern trend of holding up people of the past to the moral/behaviors standards of the present.
If you can't be objective about your subject matter, at least write about something that you like.
Don't waste your time with this book.
If you can't be objective about your subject matter, at least write about something that you like.
Don't waste your time with this book.
October 30, 2019
This book oozed with the passion of her research. And being from Michigan, I really enjoyed reading it. But her focus on using modern day PC presumptions distracted from her conclusions in many parts.
Focusing on the specific area of Champaign, IL (with it's excellent University), surrounding areas, and the peoples that made the human history of the place gave it a great focus, and I did a lot of compare & contrast with where I grew up in East Lansing, MI (with it's excellent Michigan State University) and there are a plethora of both similarities and differences. Her deconstruction of the myth of the "Heartland" was very similar to my own experience after being overseas for more than a decade, and coming back to the Midwest in 1990. I'd heard the myth, and always wondered "Where did this BS come from?" She did a particularly good job of tracking the origin of the myth. On the other hand, she focuses on the Kickapoo Tribe, and their relations with the US Military, and I think she was off base in her description of both groups, how they think and why they did what they did. It irked me a bit that she overlooked the French influence in Illinois, but they didn't establish any forts or trading posts in Champaign County, so other than the name, she judged them insignificant. Pity that. All in all, a worthy read, and I hope she sells many copies, and people actually read it.
Focusing on the specific area of Champaign, IL (with it's excellent University), surrounding areas, and the peoples that made the human history of the place gave it a great focus, and I did a lot of compare & contrast with where I grew up in East Lansing, MI (with it's excellent Michigan State University) and there are a plethora of both similarities and differences. Her deconstruction of the myth of the "Heartland" was very similar to my own experience after being overseas for more than a decade, and coming back to the Midwest in 1990. I'd heard the myth, and always wondered "Where did this BS come from?" She did a particularly good job of tracking the origin of the myth. On the other hand, she focuses on the Kickapoo Tribe, and their relations with the US Military, and I think she was off base in her description of both groups, how they think and why they did what they did. It irked me a bit that she overlooked the French influence in Illinois, but they didn't establish any forts or trading posts in Champaign County, so other than the name, she judged them insignificant. Pity that. All in all, a worthy read, and I hope she sells many copies, and people actually read it.
January 21, 2020
Seeks to repudiate the myth of the heartland as a one-dimensional, unchanging, and conservative region with little impact on the nation’s past. Hoganson focuses mainly on Champaign, Illinois, as a microcosm of the heartland. She delves into various historical aspects that had an effect on the region, including agriculture, animal husbandry, education, politics, aviation, bird migration, and the presence of Native Americans. All these elements contributed to the region’s rich, interconnected history. An exhaustive work, alternately interesting and dry. Overall, an excellent work of scholarship and must-read to gain a greater understanding of this rich and complex area of the country.
An irk with the cataloging of the book: only the broader sub-heading of “Middle West” is used in the subject headings, with no mention of Champaign or Illinois. This is unfortunate in that it may lead many a researcher or patron interested specifically in this particular region to pass over the book.
An irk with the cataloging of the book: only the broader sub-heading of “Middle West” is used in the subject headings, with no mention of Champaign or Illinois. This is unfortunate in that it may lead many a researcher or patron interested specifically in this particular region to pass over the book.
April 18, 2020
This was not an easy book for me. And yet I learned so much. Picking it up you think it will help define that part of the world in which you have lived most of your life. Yes and no. Hoganson takes you places you didn't think you would ever go. Central Illinois becomes the locus of Kickapoos, Berkshire hogs, and English beef cattle. Sound strange...it is and yet it all comes together suggesting that the heartland is a myth. I am reminded of the adage, the good old days were never really that good. The heartland is in no way an isolated flyover static place but as global as anyplace (perhaps even more).
February 22, 2025
Well-written and I'm for admirably local histories that can be transposed onto the national scale. But wow, nothing new was learned. Maybe some anecdotes but a frustratingly surface-level investigation into the contradiction of rural America and one that assumes that the reader has like no experience with the midwest? Which I found to make the book so much more redundant than it needed to be. Really quite repetitive by the 100th page.
August 13, 2019
Wow this book had so muchinfoabout thebeginigof farming the hops and their breed I liked this book it had much to learn about the beginning of farming Eric
September 11, 2023
Hoganson's conclusions and research carries the book, which is otherwise an incredibly dry history of central Illinois and how not parochial it is
March 19, 2024
The book blows up the idea of local and heartland. This is not done negatively, but rather focuses on the presumptions that do not exist in reality and historically. The focus is largely Champagne Co, IL, as the center of the US. Well done and challenging, the book helps our national discussion of identity, place, role, and history.
May 30, 2025
The argument is very interesting. I appreciated all that I learned. However, this is a difficult read. It seems as though some of the research could be shortened to keep readers engaged.
May 27, 2019
I read about this book in a review in my Sunday newspaper. It is a scholarly book by a history professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Dr. Hoganson is a transplant to the Midwest. Coming from the East Coast she has now spent more time in Illinois and calls the prairie state "home." I was a native of Michigan who left 50 years ago for the West Coast. I left to escape to "greener pastures" and she got there fearing she would become the provincial conservative hayseed that the region's flyover reputation led her to believe was at the "heart" of America. When one leaves "home" we don't really think of it as anything but a place we escaped from and we also are stuck with our memories of how it was when we lived there. The problem was that we were children and it was a specific period in time. Hence although I have periodically read books about the Midwest, it hasn't been a big study area for me. I don't know that until recently when it has become so important politically that much popular scholarship has been done on the Heartland.
Dr. Hoganson studies Champaigne County starting with the Kickapoo Indians and the County History books that were published in the 19th century about the great settlers of the area. She delves deeply into the farm country and how important markets, weather, seeds and livestock are to the farmers and through all of that connects them to the global world. She makes it very clear that the stereotype of the lone farmer out in his field on his tractor is NOT what it appears. To succeed or survive at farming one is part of a vast global web that provides food for the world. But despite these connections and the fact that all of those farmers came from somewhere else at one time or another and hence had outside influences, they were most closely connected to Canada and Great Britain.
They displaced the Native Americans easily and with little guilt thinking that the Natives had not established themselves on the land. The Kickapoos of Illinois were travelling people. Their very name means "he moves about, standing now here, now there." Treatment of African-Americans and Mexicans have the same sorry history. I'm not sure that in my mind even with all of her evidence of the world wide web that Midwesterners are connected to, they still seem to be predominately white and closed to seeing others as worthy of equality. If the Heartland represents the "heart" of America, it is a pretty racist heart.
Hoganson doesn't really get very far into the 20th Century much less the 21st so we aren't getting a picture of the recent flood of immigrants, "transients, radicals, people of color, audacious women, unruly children, the disabled, the queer or the poor" who make up the current population. Obama came out of Chicago and was elected by the heartlanders. Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend Indiana and a gay man was elected as well as the current Chicago mayor a gay woman who is also African-American. I think I would believe the myth is just that if she had taken us a little further into the present.
Dr. Hoganson studies Champaigne County starting with the Kickapoo Indians and the County History books that were published in the 19th century about the great settlers of the area. She delves deeply into the farm country and how important markets, weather, seeds and livestock are to the farmers and through all of that connects them to the global world. She makes it very clear that the stereotype of the lone farmer out in his field on his tractor is NOT what it appears. To succeed or survive at farming one is part of a vast global web that provides food for the world. But despite these connections and the fact that all of those farmers came from somewhere else at one time or another and hence had outside influences, they were most closely connected to Canada and Great Britain.
They displaced the Native Americans easily and with little guilt thinking that the Natives had not established themselves on the land. The Kickapoos of Illinois were travelling people. Their very name means "he moves about, standing now here, now there." Treatment of African-Americans and Mexicans have the same sorry history. I'm not sure that in my mind even with all of her evidence of the world wide web that Midwesterners are connected to, they still seem to be predominately white and closed to seeing others as worthy of equality. If the Heartland represents the "heart" of America, it is a pretty racist heart.
Hoganson doesn't really get very far into the 20th Century much less the 21st so we aren't getting a picture of the recent flood of immigrants, "transients, radicals, people of color, audacious women, unruly children, the disabled, the queer or the poor" who make up the current population. Obama came out of Chicago and was elected by the heartlanders. Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend Indiana and a gay man was elected as well as the current Chicago mayor a gay woman who is also African-American. I think I would believe the myth is just that if she had taken us a little further into the present.
November 14, 2019
The Inland Globalists
Many Americans have the impression that the American Heartland, defined as the Prairie States, or as those states bound by the Appalachians on the east and the Rockies on the west, as insular and provincial, as a place deeply rooted in boosterish Americana. However, those who have lived in these states for any length of time know that such a description doesn’t capture the true spirit of the place. These people know that even those living and working in the lightly populated towns and on farms are as much globalists as those living on the coasts. The plight of farmers caught up in the current administration’s trade wars should disabuse anybody clinging to the notion of an isolated midland. And if that isn’t sufficient, well, then there is Kristin Hoganson’s new and fine history of the world at the doorstep of mid America, The Heartland.
Hoganson, a professor of U.S. history at the University of Illinois, in Champaign-Urbana (about as deep in the heart of America as you can get), starts at the beginning, the very beginning, when Native American tribes roamed the heartland. She focuses on the Kickapoos who hunted far and wide over the mid lands, until white pioneers poured into their land and drove them out onto reservations in the Southwest, and pushed some into northern Mexico, a sad tale of cultural destruction she narrates well. These settlers came from the East, but also from northern Europe. Engaged in dividing the land, possessing it, cultivating it, and breeding animals for mass consumption, these settlers reached across the ocean, to the old country, for stock and capital. She illustrates this globalism in many ways.
To mention two prominent examples, she spends considerable time on hog breeding, specifically the imperial pig, the Berkshire Hog. You’ll learn quite a bit about animal husbandry, but you’ll also see how people in the middle of America drew from overseas to improve their stocks and their fortunes. Then there is the Illinois Central Railroad, famously the subject of Steven Goodman’s song “The City of New Orleans.” This all-American rail line was the first land-grant railroad in the U.S. However, though granted 2.5 million acres by the Illinois legislature, to get going, the company needed capital. When it couldn’t get it from New York investors, it turned to London. Eventually, the British took control to get their hands on the land. They imported capital and labor from Ireland. Going full circle, so to speak, the Canadian National Railroad now runs the all-American Illinois Railroad. These tales and more make for fascinating reading and support the idea of the interconnectedness of people.
Now, Americans seem to hate talking about racism, probably because the majority of people don’t like thinking of themselves, or their ancestors, as racists. However, racism is a forming feature of the U.S., even embedded in our most cherished (though little read) founding document, the U.S. Constitution. Hoganson is not one of those people who shy away from the subject. Her extensive coverage of the near annihilation of the Kickapoo people is at its heart murderous racism. Racism was a dominant aspect of heartland life. So ingrained was it that it reached into every aspect of life, even the breeding of hogs. While breeders liked the Berkshire hog for many reasons, including snobbery, they didn’t much care for the black tint of its skin. And so they worked to breed it white. To quote the American Swine and Poultry Journal and Hoganson, “‘Some of our best breeders are now getting their best pigs with a nearly clear or white skin and black hair, which makes them very attractive, much more so than a dull black skin.’ Since skin coloring had no intrinsic economic value in a dressed animal, Berkshire breeders’ efforts to whiten their animals can be attributed to their investments in white supremacy.” No words minced there.
All in all, readers wishing another viewpoint on the American heartland and the international nature of American life throughout our history as a nation, these readers will find The Heartland a worthwhile adventure in American history.
Many Americans have the impression that the American Heartland, defined as the Prairie States, or as those states bound by the Appalachians on the east and the Rockies on the west, as insular and provincial, as a place deeply rooted in boosterish Americana. However, those who have lived in these states for any length of time know that such a description doesn’t capture the true spirit of the place. These people know that even those living and working in the lightly populated towns and on farms are as much globalists as those living on the coasts. The plight of farmers caught up in the current administration’s trade wars should disabuse anybody clinging to the notion of an isolated midland. And if that isn’t sufficient, well, then there is Kristin Hoganson’s new and fine history of the world at the doorstep of mid America, The Heartland.
Hoganson, a professor of U.S. history at the University of Illinois, in Champaign-Urbana (about as deep in the heart of America as you can get), starts at the beginning, the very beginning, when Native American tribes roamed the heartland. She focuses on the Kickapoos who hunted far and wide over the mid lands, until white pioneers poured into their land and drove them out onto reservations in the Southwest, and pushed some into northern Mexico, a sad tale of cultural destruction she narrates well. These settlers came from the East, but also from northern Europe. Engaged in dividing the land, possessing it, cultivating it, and breeding animals for mass consumption, these settlers reached across the ocean, to the old country, for stock and capital. She illustrates this globalism in many ways.
To mention two prominent examples, she spends considerable time on hog breeding, specifically the imperial pig, the Berkshire Hog. You’ll learn quite a bit about animal husbandry, but you’ll also see how people in the middle of America drew from overseas to improve their stocks and their fortunes. Then there is the Illinois Central Railroad, famously the subject of Steven Goodman’s song “The City of New Orleans.” This all-American rail line was the first land-grant railroad in the U.S. However, though granted 2.5 million acres by the Illinois legislature, to get going, the company needed capital. When it couldn’t get it from New York investors, it turned to London. Eventually, the British took control to get their hands on the land. They imported capital and labor from Ireland. Going full circle, so to speak, the Canadian National Railroad now runs the all-American Illinois Railroad. These tales and more make for fascinating reading and support the idea of the interconnectedness of people.
Now, Americans seem to hate talking about racism, probably because the majority of people don’t like thinking of themselves, or their ancestors, as racists. However, racism is a forming feature of the U.S., even embedded in our most cherished (though little read) founding document, the U.S. Constitution. Hoganson is not one of those people who shy away from the subject. Her extensive coverage of the near annihilation of the Kickapoo people is at its heart murderous racism. Racism was a dominant aspect of heartland life. So ingrained was it that it reached into every aspect of life, even the breeding of hogs. While breeders liked the Berkshire hog for many reasons, including snobbery, they didn’t much care for the black tint of its skin. And so they worked to breed it white. To quote the American Swine and Poultry Journal and Hoganson, “‘Some of our best breeders are now getting their best pigs with a nearly clear or white skin and black hair, which makes them very attractive, much more so than a dull black skin.’ Since skin coloring had no intrinsic economic value in a dressed animal, Berkshire breeders’ efforts to whiten their animals can be attributed to their investments in white supremacy.” No words minced there.
All in all, readers wishing another viewpoint on the American heartland and the international nature of American life throughout our history as a nation, these readers will find The Heartland a worthwhile adventure in American history.
December 18, 2020
Extremely disappointing work from an author from which I would of suspected much more.
"The Heartland: An American History" is a crudely jumbled piece of work that I, as a Midwesterner, find rather insulting. For a book about "the heartland" very little of it takes place in where I believe most people would consider the heartland to be. The book starts out with a rather lofty description of what Hoganson deems the "Heartland Myth", a term which she only loosely defines. It's got a lot to with, in her opinion/definition, isolationism. She then sets to TELL US but not really SHOW US, how this is true by facts and gives occurences (most of which take place in the late 19th and early 20th century) illustrate that.
Had she changed the name of this book to "The Myth of The Heartland's Isolationism" this would of made much more sense, but she didn't. So, again, in this book about the heartland it's about pigs from England and the exporting of pork to the UK, attempts to make business connects so as to enter into Asian markets, birds migrating up into Canada, two Illinois' college professors living in Greenland with Inuit tribes, raids by the displaced Kickapoo people along the Mexico/Texas border. She writes from her home in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois and does relate some stories from that small section of that state. BUT THAT'S NOT THE HEARTLAND! A part of it, yes. But Hoganson paints in such wide brush strokes that this one size fits all description is sloppy, laughable, and I'll say it again, insulting.
What I probably find the most offensive about a book entitled "The Heartland" is how little (if any) discussion of the culture/people in this part of America. Yes there is some talk of immigration, namely German, but very little about how that people shaped culture. Nothing of substance is said about the way German brewing brought an economic boom to places like St Louis and Milwaukee, nothing much is said about the way various religious orders fostered community and connection, nothing is said about President Eisenhower and how following his leadership post WWII and then into the White House led to a reworking of America's highway system allowing more easier transportation of harvests, among a great many other things. All the political issues in the history of America (the genocide of the Native American people, the spread of racism westward following the Civil War, the Dust Bowl, etc etc) these all either go without any mention or get treated with kid gloves. The book is so focused on the economics of "The Heartland" that we get a very flat, one dimensional plotline. "The Heartland" doesn't exist in a vacumm and for Hoganson to treat it as though it is does is, once again, an insult to the reader.
And if that wasn't bad enough she closes the book with saying something along the lines that the "myth of The Heartland" and how it's nothing more than a political strategy (again, something she tell us and doesn't give examples of, the greatest sin an author can make in my opinion) and has never really existed. The belief in God, mom, and apple pie has been a lie and yet Hoganson has written a whole book about it? A book full of how English butchers sold American pork to unknowing British citizens at a higher price? A book about how the Inuit people were only saved from starvation every year by the return of migrating birds? A book about seeing bi-planes at state and county fairs? Wow, Professor Hoganson. You've pretty much wasted about ten hours of my life. How many months or maybe even years of your own did you waste on this?
"The Heartland: An American History" is a crudely jumbled piece of work that I, as a Midwesterner, find rather insulting. For a book about "the heartland" very little of it takes place in where I believe most people would consider the heartland to be. The book starts out with a rather lofty description of what Hoganson deems the "Heartland Myth", a term which she only loosely defines. It's got a lot to with, in her opinion/definition, isolationism. She then sets to TELL US but not really SHOW US, how this is true by facts and gives occurences (most of which take place in the late 19th and early 20th century) illustrate that.
Had she changed the name of this book to "The Myth of The Heartland's Isolationism" this would of made much more sense, but she didn't. So, again, in this book about the heartland it's about pigs from England and the exporting of pork to the UK, attempts to make business connects so as to enter into Asian markets, birds migrating up into Canada, two Illinois' college professors living in Greenland with Inuit tribes, raids by the displaced Kickapoo people along the Mexico/Texas border. She writes from her home in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois and does relate some stories from that small section of that state. BUT THAT'S NOT THE HEARTLAND! A part of it, yes. But Hoganson paints in such wide brush strokes that this one size fits all description is sloppy, laughable, and I'll say it again, insulting.
What I probably find the most offensive about a book entitled "The Heartland" is how little (if any) discussion of the culture/people in this part of America. Yes there is some talk of immigration, namely German, but very little about how that people shaped culture. Nothing of substance is said about the way German brewing brought an economic boom to places like St Louis and Milwaukee, nothing much is said about the way various religious orders fostered community and connection, nothing is said about President Eisenhower and how following his leadership post WWII and then into the White House led to a reworking of America's highway system allowing more easier transportation of harvests, among a great many other things. All the political issues in the history of America (the genocide of the Native American people, the spread of racism westward following the Civil War, the Dust Bowl, etc etc) these all either go without any mention or get treated with kid gloves. The book is so focused on the economics of "The Heartland" that we get a very flat, one dimensional plotline. "The Heartland" doesn't exist in a vacumm and for Hoganson to treat it as though it is does is, once again, an insult to the reader.
And if that wasn't bad enough she closes the book with saying something along the lines that the "myth of The Heartland" and how it's nothing more than a political strategy (again, something she tell us and doesn't give examples of, the greatest sin an author can make in my opinion) and has never really existed. The belief in God, mom, and apple pie has been a lie and yet Hoganson has written a whole book about it? A book full of how English butchers sold American pork to unknowing British citizens at a higher price? A book about how the Inuit people were only saved from starvation every year by the return of migrating birds? A book about seeing bi-planes at state and county fairs? Wow, Professor Hoganson. You've pretty much wasted about ten hours of my life. How many months or maybe even years of your own did you waste on this?
March 20, 2024
Wow! The reviews for this book are all over the place, seeming either very strong or very weak, take your pick. I'm late to the game so read a lot of reviews here - Goodreads- first, before I started the book. I wasn't sure what to expect. After reading, I can see strong points on each pole.
As American History, I love it. As sociology or psychology, not so much. To me it goes a little too far beyond social history in my reading, i.e., not drinking all the kool-ade she's pouring. I don't necessarily agree with the big picture she paints to tie it all together. Regardless, each of these threads she investigates, railroads, weather, animal husbandry, commercial agriculture, land grant university agricultural education, pioneering logistics of international agricultural trade, apples, corn, birds and bees - literally - is fascinating on its own.
I love Native American history. Given that, I found the section about the Kickapoo natives, on whose ancestral land I probably ran or biked as a kid, the best part of the book.
I must admit bias. From age 3 until age 21, I lived in Urbana, the county seat of the county, Champaign, around which the narrative revolves. Kind of cool to find such a deep read about stuff in your own backyard you didn't even know, told by Hoganson using 115 year-old clippings from your hometown newspapers. I learned a lot more about my hometown reading this book in my senior years, than I did in all my previous years learning my local history starting as a kid in school, Scouts, church, etc.
Think the subject matter is likely a little too "inside baseball" for those without connection to the community. However, as a huge Big Ten school, a lot of people have gone through town at U of I. They might find the local history around the founding of the Illinois Agricultural College interesting if they are into that kind of thing. GO ILLINI!
Similarly, my second favorite part of the book was the history of Chanute AFB, 20 miles north of town. Never knew the early history and founding story about the base. A lot of people probably went thru Rantoul over the years too and would also enjoy the extensive local detail Hoganson provides. Then again, that stuff puts some people to sleep.
Objectively, gotta say worth giving it a try. If you're not turning pages by the second or third chapter, stop; it won't get any different. The detail as history again is fascinating and interesting for a history dork like me. Not likely the general reader's cup of tea unless they are captivated by her thesis about the representation of the heartland.
As American History, I love it. As sociology or psychology, not so much. To me it goes a little too far beyond social history in my reading, i.e., not drinking all the kool-ade she's pouring. I don't necessarily agree with the big picture she paints to tie it all together. Regardless, each of these threads she investigates, railroads, weather, animal husbandry, commercial agriculture, land grant university agricultural education, pioneering logistics of international agricultural trade, apples, corn, birds and bees - literally - is fascinating on its own.
I love Native American history. Given that, I found the section about the Kickapoo natives, on whose ancestral land I probably ran or biked as a kid, the best part of the book.
I must admit bias. From age 3 until age 21, I lived in Urbana, the county seat of the county, Champaign, around which the narrative revolves. Kind of cool to find such a deep read about stuff in your own backyard you didn't even know, told by Hoganson using 115 year-old clippings from your hometown newspapers. I learned a lot more about my hometown reading this book in my senior years, than I did in all my previous years learning my local history starting as a kid in school, Scouts, church, etc.
Think the subject matter is likely a little too "inside baseball" for those without connection to the community. However, as a huge Big Ten school, a lot of people have gone through town at U of I. They might find the local history around the founding of the Illinois Agricultural College interesting if they are into that kind of thing. GO ILLINI!
Similarly, my second favorite part of the book was the history of Chanute AFB, 20 miles north of town. Never knew the early history and founding story about the base. A lot of people probably went thru Rantoul over the years too and would also enjoy the extensive local detail Hoganson provides. Then again, that stuff puts some people to sleep.
Objectively, gotta say worth giving it a try. If you're not turning pages by the second or third chapter, stop; it won't get any different. The detail as history again is fascinating and interesting for a history dork like me. Not likely the general reader's cup of tea unless they are captivated by her thesis about the representation of the heartland.
July 22, 2019
I was very curious to read this, given the promise of the description. However, the most interesting material is mostly non-sequitur, describing the plight of the native americans that were displaced (and hounded, and massacred) by the white invaders. That material would have made for a compelling story, but hardly advances her argument that "the heartland" is not xenophobic and isolationist.
Her detailed descriptions of the development of national and international commerce make clear that folks in the midwest are interested in selling their products all over, but the continued disengagement with other places as anything more than buyers undermines any aspirations to claims of cosmopolitanism.
The author spends a good deal of time on the work done to turn a functioning prairie ecosystem into an artificially supported monoculture machine, noting the disappearance of birds and other markers of a healthy environment, and yet ignores the profound disconnection from place that underlies the "farmers" extended campaign to subvert the health of the land (and, along the way, their own future). What does it mean for people to claim they live in a "heartland" when they show no meaningful connection to that very land?
I found myself cringing more than once at her flippant references to the profound racism that seems endemic to "the heartland." It is just not acceptable to describe this without comment, or at least to connect it to the politics of the place.
I was intrigued by the distinction between "fly-over" and "flown-over" country. A longer essay on that might stand alone and be worth a read.
All in all, there are bits worth reading, and obviously a good deal of research (especially on the history and plight of the Kickapoo people), but the book fails to support the purported thesis, and is more than a little frustrating. Hard to recommend unless you are really motivated.
Her detailed descriptions of the development of national and international commerce make clear that folks in the midwest are interested in selling their products all over, but the continued disengagement with other places as anything more than buyers undermines any aspirations to claims of cosmopolitanism.
The author spends a good deal of time on the work done to turn a functioning prairie ecosystem into an artificially supported monoculture machine, noting the disappearance of birds and other markers of a healthy environment, and yet ignores the profound disconnection from place that underlies the "farmers" extended campaign to subvert the health of the land (and, along the way, their own future). What does it mean for people to claim they live in a "heartland" when they show no meaningful connection to that very land?
I found myself cringing more than once at her flippant references to the profound racism that seems endemic to "the heartland." It is just not acceptable to describe this without comment, or at least to connect it to the politics of the place.
I was intrigued by the distinction between "fly-over" and "flown-over" country. A longer essay on that might stand alone and be worth a read.
All in all, there are bits worth reading, and obviously a good deal of research (especially on the history and plight of the Kickapoo people), but the book fails to support the purported thesis, and is more than a little frustrating. Hard to recommend unless you are really motivated.
February 11, 2022
There are already lots of reviews of this book, so I will not repeat frequently discussed themes. I did not find the book at all difficult to read, and it held my interest. Hoganson picks several key themes to explore how this area in Northwest Illinois was interconnected and dynamic, on the one hand, and how racial and colonial stereotypes were used create an image of an unchanging, safe and boring place for White people of European origin. You could approach it as a set of loosely connected historical essays, mostly emphasizing the relationships among ecology, agriculture and the various peoples that have moved through the region.
Hoganson suggests that she is countering a "heartland" myth with these essays. Although I have lived most of my life in the geographical region she describes (though not Illinois) I couldn't figure out what she meant. Like some other reviewers noted, she seems to be countering a "myth" that no one who lives here believes, in the first place. That aspect of the book may be geared to people living on the coast, but what she does talk about with respect to changes on the land should be pretty interesting to people who live here.
Here's one sour note: Several chapters note people from Champaign/Urbana going all over the world, and people from all over the world going there. That is NOT like most counties in the Midwest, but it is very typical for places that have programs in agricultural science. (I've lived in three of them.) I recommend Jane Smiley's novel Moo as a hilarious treatment of these anomalous communities. The displacement of Native Americans and the movement of crops and livestock would be typical of many places in the Midwest, and Hoganson's treatment of structural and implicit racism is, too. But if "the heartland myth" is intended to imply a certain insularity, these college towns are not a fair test of it.
September 18, 2025
America's Heartland - the Midwest - is often referred to as flyover country and is sometimes the butt of jokes. And is usually thought of as provincial, isolated, and ... boring. Author Hoganson is a transplant to Illinois where she now teaches at the University of Illinois and was a member of the US State Department's Historical Advisory Committee until apparently all members of the committee were fired by DJT in 2025. Enough said about that.
The Heartland is a complex story with far more details than I could absorb. The chapter "Hog-Tied" focused on various breeds of pigs that were favored by Illinois farmers (especially those in Champlain County) who were greatly influenced by hog breeders, buyers and sellers from Canada and Great Britain where the Berkshire breed was popular. In several chapters there were references to the development of railroad lines that connected Illinois to Mexico, Canada, and both US coasts.
As the post-secondary education blossomed, it brought scholars from around the world, and scholars from Illinois institutions travelled abroad to share their expertise and observe agricultural and horticultural practices from other cultures.
Altogether, the book examined the story of the heartland from many angles including ornithology, air travel, isolationist policies, displacement of indigenous people, and much more. Newspaper snippets, drawings, charts, etc from the archives of various publications enhanced the text. Good book but not for everyone.
The Heartland is a complex story with far more details than I could absorb. The chapter "Hog-Tied" focused on various breeds of pigs that were favored by Illinois farmers (especially those in Champlain County) who were greatly influenced by hog breeders, buyers and sellers from Canada and Great Britain where the Berkshire breed was popular. In several chapters there were references to the development of railroad lines that connected Illinois to Mexico, Canada, and both US coasts.
As the post-secondary education blossomed, it brought scholars from around the world, and scholars from Illinois institutions travelled abroad to share their expertise and observe agricultural and horticultural practices from other cultures.
Altogether, the book examined the story of the heartland from many angles including ornithology, air travel, isolationist policies, displacement of indigenous people, and much more. Newspaper snippets, drawings, charts, etc from the archives of various publications enhanced the text. Good book but not for everyone.
March 27, 2019
The author's exploration into the history of the "American heartland" of the Midwest, demonstrating through its own historical record how the mythology surrounding the heartland is inconsistent with its lived experience.
The author has done a deep dive into the historical records of Champaign, Illinois, and uses it as representative of the Midwest in general. The "heartland" is often seen as open, empty space, waiting for settlement; she shows how the Kickapoo were run out of the land so as to make it seem open and empty, and chronicles the dispossession and inhuman treatment the Kickapoos experienced as they were driven west and later south. The "heartland" is often seen as insulated, remote and disconnected from the issues of the world; she shows how the farmers and institutions of Champaign County were deeply enmeshed in the world of the day, growing crops and raising hogs and cattle with connections from Britain to Canada to Mexico, literally feeding the forces of empire during World War I, driving economic expansion, and thus by no means innocent of the projection of empire around the world.
And so the "heartland" shares in the spoils and the snares of the Anglo-Saxon project in Britain and America, and was very much a part of it.
A thoroughly engaging work.
**--galley received as part of early review program
The author has done a deep dive into the historical records of Champaign, Illinois, and uses it as representative of the Midwest in general. The "heartland" is often seen as open, empty space, waiting for settlement; she shows how the Kickapoo were run out of the land so as to make it seem open and empty, and chronicles the dispossession and inhuman treatment the Kickapoos experienced as they were driven west and later south. The "heartland" is often seen as insulated, remote and disconnected from the issues of the world; she shows how the farmers and institutions of Champaign County were deeply enmeshed in the world of the day, growing crops and raising hogs and cattle with connections from Britain to Canada to Mexico, literally feeding the forces of empire during World War I, driving economic expansion, and thus by no means innocent of the projection of empire around the world.
And so the "heartland" shares in the spoils and the snares of the Anglo-Saxon project in Britain and America, and was very much a part of it.
A thoroughly engaging work.
**--galley received as part of early review program
November 15, 2019
Hoganson explores what she calls the "myth" of the Midwest as America's "heartland". The concept brings many things to mind like the middle of the country as being insulated, isolated, provincial and being just plain local...things of which do not describe in any real way at all.
She sets out to dispel what many folks may see as, at best, a back-handed compliment or simply a dismissal of this region of the country and it's people. She painstakingly describes the rich history of the region, mostly using her own hometown area in Champaign, IL in the north-central part of the state to provide historic examples.
She uses examples of the geography, meat producing and packing history of the state, political history and other elements to show that the Midwest is more of a convergence of the middle and the borders of the country that reflects all areas and those sometimes maddening and discouraging conditions that sometimes had very sad results like "Indian removal" and the dismissal of a wide swath of the US as "flyover country".
The examples Hoganson provides may be things you already think you know about..and others may surprise you.
This book may help readers better understand this region of the country, and of ourselves, for those of us who call it our home.
She sets out to dispel what many folks may see as, at best, a back-handed compliment or simply a dismissal of this region of the country and it's people. She painstakingly describes the rich history of the region, mostly using her own hometown area in Champaign, IL in the north-central part of the state to provide historic examples.
She uses examples of the geography, meat producing and packing history of the state, political history and other elements to show that the Midwest is more of a convergence of the middle and the borders of the country that reflects all areas and those sometimes maddening and discouraging conditions that sometimes had very sad results like "Indian removal" and the dismissal of a wide swath of the US as "flyover country".
The examples Hoganson provides may be things you already think you know about..and others may surprise you.
This book may help readers better understand this region of the country, and of ourselves, for those of us who call it our home.
June 19, 2021
"The Heartland" focuses on Champaign County, Illinois as a microcosm for a history of the "Midwest" regions, places on the growing edge of an expanding United States of America now actually quite to the east of the geographic center. The book aims develops arguments the common tropes, stereotypes, or images of the Midwest as rooted, isolated, nativist, and provincial. Instead, its people are mobile, deeply interconnected to a broader English-speaking empire, impose entirely foreign technosocial norms down to the biological/ecological scale, and alter trade at a global scale.
There is a subtlety to this book; it uses really only two overriding narratives: the displacement of local indigenous people and the development of an agricultural system with English varieties, breeds, and preferences over a previously wetland area rapidly changed by drainage tiles. As a history, it seems quite limited until one zooms out: is there anything more historically important and central than a complete and ongoing agro-ecological imperial takeover?
"The Heartland" doesn't waste time arguing about what's actually central but instead just explodes preconceptions and walks away without looking back.
There is a subtlety to this book; it uses really only two overriding narratives: the displacement of local indigenous people and the development of an agricultural system with English varieties, breeds, and preferences over a previously wetland area rapidly changed by drainage tiles. As a history, it seems quite limited until one zooms out: is there anything more historically important and central than a complete and ongoing agro-ecological imperial takeover?
"The Heartland" doesn't waste time arguing about what's actually central but instead just explodes preconceptions and walks away without looking back.
April 13, 2025
a very well-researched book on when it comes to animal husbandry and indigenous history (the first and final chapters would make a very solid standalone book on the Kickapoo) that falls flat in a handful of other ways:
- Hoganson uses Champaign County as a microcosm for the 'American heartland' as the crux of her argument that the heartland was in fact quite cosmopolitan and (her word) transimperial. However a lot of the cosmopolitan-ness was due to the location of the flagship University of Illinois campus in the county -- go two counties over and you would miss out on at least 50% of the worldliness she argues is inherent throughout the heartland
- Not to get too into the Dialectic, but this book is antithesis in search of thesis and synthesis. Hoganson delves into how the myth of the isolationist, insular heartland is not historically accurate, but does not delve into how that myth developed or by whom, other than the occasional references to 'politics'
- at a few points, especially towards the end, it feels as if Hoganson is searching for one-liners
- chapters 2 and 3, on production of beef and pork, read at times like lists of facts. Use this book if you're writing a research paper on the topic, otherwise really skim these ~hundred pages.
- Hoganson uses Champaign County as a microcosm for the 'American heartland' as the crux of her argument that the heartland was in fact quite cosmopolitan and (her word) transimperial. However a lot of the cosmopolitan-ness was due to the location of the flagship University of Illinois campus in the county -- go two counties over and you would miss out on at least 50% of the worldliness she argues is inherent throughout the heartland
- Not to get too into the Dialectic, but this book is antithesis in search of thesis and synthesis. Hoganson delves into how the myth of the isolationist, insular heartland is not historically accurate, but does not delve into how that myth developed or by whom, other than the occasional references to 'politics'
- at a few points, especially towards the end, it feels as if Hoganson is searching for one-liners
- chapters 2 and 3, on production of beef and pork, read at times like lists of facts. Use this book if you're writing a research paper on the topic, otherwise really skim these ~hundred pages.
November 7, 2021
Important and thought provoking, this history of the Midwest, specifically about Champaign County in the middle of Illinois, explodes the myth of a backward and isolated American heartland. As Hoganson argues, that narrative is a myth, was always a myth. And that myth belied the connectedness of people and animals near and far, landscape and technology and the world; and it ignored the truths of immigration and migration. The myth of the heartland was a constructed political narrative that, if unpacked, can reveal much about what America is and has perceived itself to be across time.
I feel lucky and honored to have taken a seminar with Hoganson while I was a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, where Hoganson still teaches and lives. This book is a culmination of much of her good work on borders and language and the history of changing, overlapping, and orchestrated definitions of America.
I feel lucky and honored to have taken a seminar with Hoganson while I was a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, where Hoganson still teaches and lives. This book is a culmination of much of her good work on borders and language and the history of changing, overlapping, and orchestrated definitions of America.
August 15, 2019
I expected this book to be a history of the American heartland, but it turned out to be much more. Hoganson takes the heartland myth and turns it on its head, not only debunking it, but revealing what has always been there in its place. I've always cringed against the assumption that the Midwest is isolationist, and now I feel better able to articulate not only why it doesn't operate in isolation, but also why it never has done. It is not only intimately connected to other parts of the United States, but to its neighbors to the north and south, separated only by political borders, and to the rest of the world beside, through agriculture, ecology, migration, and so much else. I found the book got a bit granular, especially around ornithology, but overall I found the story to be fascinating and so well written.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 91 reviews