Jon K. Lauck's Books

The Good Country

A History of the American Midwest, 1800–1900

By: Jon K. Lauck

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The Good Country

A History of the American Midwest, 1800–1900

By: Jon K. Lauck

At the center of American history is a hole—a gap where some scholars’ indifference or disdain has too long stood in for the true story of the American Midwest. A first-ever chronicle of the Midwest’s formative century, The Good Country restores this American heartland to its central place in the nation’s history. Jon K. Lauck, the premier historian of the region, puts midwestern “squares” center stage—an unorthodox approach that leads to surprising conclusions. The American Midwest, in Lauck’s cogent account, was the most democratically advanced place in the world during the nineteenth century. The Good Country describes a rich civic culture that prized education, literature, libraries, and the arts; developed a stable social order grounded in Victorian norms, republican virtue, and Christian teachings; and generally put democratic ideals into practice to a greater extent than any nation to date. The outbreak of the Civil War and the fight against the slaveholding South only deepened the Midwest’s dedication to advancing a democratic culture and solidified its regional identity. The “good country” was, of course, not the “perfect country,” and Lauck devotes a chapter to the question of race in the Midwest, finding early examples of overt racism but also discovering a steady march toward racial progress. He also finds many instances of modest reforms enacted through the democratic process and designed to address particular social problems, as well as significant advances for women, who were active in civic affairs and took advantage of the Midwest’s openness to women in higher education. Lauck reaches his conclusions through a measured analysis that weighs historical achievements and injustices, rejects the acrimonious tones of the culture wars, and seeks a new historical discourse grounded in fair readings of the American past. In a trying time of contested politics and culture, his book locates a middle ground, fittingly, in the center of the country.

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363

Publisher

University of Oklahoma Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0806191414

ISBN 13

9780806191416

The Good Country

A History of the American Midwest, 1800–1900

By: Jon K. Lauck

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The Good Country

A History of the American Midwest, 1800–1900

By: Jon K. Lauck

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363

Publisher

University of Oklahoma Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0806191414

ISBN 13

9780806191416

From Warm Center to Ragged Edge

The Erosion of Midwestern Literary and Historical Regionalism, 1920-1965

By: Jon K. Lauck

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From Warm Center to Ragged Edge

The Erosion of Midwestern Literary and Historical Regionalism, 1920-1965

By: Jon K. Lauck

During the half-century after the Civil War, intellectuals and politicians assumed the Midwest to be the font and heart of American culture. Despite the persistence of strong currents of midwestern regionalism during the 1920s and 1930s, the region went into eclipse during the post–World War II era. In the apt language of Minnesota’s F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Midwest slid from being the “warm center” of the republic to its “ragged edge.” This book explains the factors that triggered the demise of the Midwest’s regionalist energies, from anti-midwestern machinations in the literary world and the inability of midwestern writers to break through the cultural politics of the era to the growing dominance of a coastal, urban culture. These developments paved the way for the proliferation of images of the Midwest as flyover country, the Rust Belt, a staid and decaying region. Yet Lauck urges readers to recognize persisting and evolving forms of midwestern identity and to resist the forces that squelch the nation’s interior voices.

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269

Publisher

University of Iowa Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1609384970

ISBN 13

9781609384975

The Lost Region

Toward a Revival of Midwestern History

By: Jon K. Lauck

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The Lost Region

Toward a Revival of Midwestern History

By: Jon K. Lauck

The American Midwest is an orphan among regions. In comparison to the South, the far West, and New England, its history has been sadly neglected. To spark more attention to their region, midwestern historians will need to explain the Midwest’s crucial roles in the development of the entire country: it helped spark the American Revolution and stabilized the young American republic by strengthening its economy and endowing it with an agricultural heartland; it played a critical role in the Union victory in the Civil War; it extended the republican institutions created by the American founders, and then its settler populism made those institutions more democratic; it weakened and decentered the cultural dominance of the urban East; and its bustling land markets deepened Americans’ embrace of capitalist institutions and attitudes. In addition to outlining the centrality of the Midwest to crucial moments in American history, Jon K. Lauck resurrects the long-forgotten stories of the institutions founded by an earlier generation of midwestern historians, from state historical societies to the Mississippi Valley Historical Association. Their strong commitment to local and regional communities rooted their work in place and gave it an audience outside the academy. He also explores the works of these scholars, showing that they researched a broad range of themes and topics, often pioneering fields that remain vital today. The Lost Region demonstrates the importance of the Midwest, the depth of historical work once written about the region, the continuing insights that can be gleaned from this body of knowledge, and the lessons that can be learned from some of its prominent historians, all with the intent of once again finding the forgotten center of the nation and developing a robust historiography of the Midwest.

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Page Count

180

Publisher

University of Iowa Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1609382161

ISBN 13

9781609382162

Daschle vs. Thune

Anatomy of a High-Plains Senate Race

By: Jon K. Lauck

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Daschle vs. Thune

Anatomy of a High-Plains Senate Race

By: Jon K. Lauck

The story behind the unseating of a Senate majority leader the race between Tom Daschle and John Thune in South Dakota was widely acknowledged as “the other big race of 2004.” Second in prominence only to the presidential race, the Daschle-Thune contest pitted the rival political ideologies that have animated American politics since the 1960s. In a sign of the ongoing strength of political conservatism, Daschle became the first Senate leader in fifty years to lose a re-election bid. Historian Jon K. Lauck, a South Dakotan who was an insider during that heated campaign, now offers a multilayered examination of this hard-fought and symbolically charged race. Blending historical narrative, political analysis, and personal reflection, he offers a close-up view of the issues that divide the nation—a case study of the continuing clash between liberalism and conservatism that has played out for more than a generation in U.S. politics. Daschle vs. Thune moves beyond the nitty-gritty of public policy to deftly show how the recent past continues to shape the ongoing political battles that animate pundits and bloggers. It is a compelling story told by a writer who knows both his home ground and how it fits into the wider U.S. context.

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Page Count

423

Publisher

University of Oklahoma Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0806155078

ISBN 13

9780806155074

Prairie Republic

The Political Culture of Dakota Territory, 1879-1889

By: Jon K. Lauck

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Prairie Republic

The Political Culture of Dakota Territory, 1879-1889

By: Jon K. Lauck

American democratic ideals, civic republicanism, public morality, and Christianity were the dominant forces at work during South Dakota’s formative decade. What? In our cynical age, such a claim seems either remarkably naïve or hopelessly outdated. Territorial politics in the late-nineteenth-century West is typically viewed as a closed-door game of unprincipled opportunism or is caricatured, as in the classic film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, as a drunken exercise in bombast and rascality. Now Jon K. Lauck examines anew the values we like to think were at work during the founding of our western states. Taking Dakota Territory as a laboratory for examining a formative stage of western politics, Lauck finds that settlers from New England and the Midwest brought democratic practices and republican values to the northern plains and invoked them as guiding principles in the drive for South Dakota statehood. Prairie Republic corrects an overemphasis on class conflict and economic determinism, factors posited decades ago by such historians as Howard R. Lamar. Instead, Lauck finds South Dakota’s political founders to be agents of Protestant Christianity and of civic republicanism—an age-old ideology that entrusted the polity to independent, landowning citizens who placed the common interest above private interest. Focusing on the political culture widely shared among settlers attracted to the Great Dakota Boom of the 1880s, Lauck shows how they embraced civic virtue, broad political participation, and agrarian ideals. Family was central in their lives, as were common-school education, work, and Christian community. In rescuing the story of Dakota’s settlers from historical obscurity, Prairie Republic dissents from the recent darker portrayal of western history and expands our view and understanding of the American democratic tradition.

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304

Publisher

University of Oklahoma Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0806185880

ISBN 13

9780806185880

The Lost Region

Toward a Revival of Midwestern History

By: Jon Lauck

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The Lost Region

Toward a Revival of Midwestern History

By: Jon Lauck

In comparison to the South, the far West, and New England, the Midwest's history has been sadly neglected. The Lost Region demonstrates the regions importance, the depth of historical work once written about it, and the lessons that can be learned from some of its prominent historians, all with the intent of once again finding the forgotten center of the nation and developing a robust historiography of the Midwest. Book jacket.

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180

Publisher

University of Iowa Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1609381890

ISBN 13

9781609381899

Prairie Republic

The Political Culture of Dakota Territory, 1879-1889

By: Jon K. Lauck

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Prairie Republic

The Political Culture of Dakota Territory, 1879-1889

By: Jon K. Lauck

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Page Count

304

Publisher

University of Oklahoma Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0806185880

ISBN 13

9780806185880

Daschle vs. Thune

Anatomy of a High-Plains Senate Race

By: Jon K. Lauck

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Daschle vs. Thune

Anatomy of a High-Plains Senate Race

By: Jon K. Lauck

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423

Publisher

University of Oklahoma Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0806155078

ISBN 13

9780806155074

From Warm Center to Ragged Edge

The Erosion of Midwestern Literary and Historical Regionalism, 1920-1965

By: Jon K. Lauck

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From Warm Center to Ragged Edge

The Erosion of Midwestern Literary and Historical Regionalism, 1920-1965

By: Jon K. Lauck

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

269

Publisher

University of Iowa Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1609384970

ISBN 13

9781609384975

Book's by Jon K. Lauck

The Good Country

The Good Country

The Good Country

The Good Country

From Warm Center to Ragged Edge

From Warm Center to Ragged Edge

The Lost Region

The Lost Region

Daschle vs. Thune

Daschle vs. Thune

Prairie Republic

Prairie Republic

The Lost Region

The Lost Region

Prairie Republic

Prairie Republic

Daschle vs. Thune

Daschle vs. Thune

From Warm Center to Ragged Edge

From Warm Center to Ragged Edge

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