Description
Book Synopsis2024 Jon Gjerde Prize Winner for best book in Midwestern History
After the War of 1812 and the removal of the region’s Indigenous peoples, the American Midwest became a paradoxical land for settlers. Even as many settlers found that the region provided the bountiful life of their dreams, others found disappointment, even failure—and still others suffered social and racial prejudice.
In this broad and authoritative survey of midwestern agriculture from the War of 1812 to the turn of the twentieth century, R. Douglas Hurt contends that this region proved to be the country’s garden spot and the nation’s heart of agricultural production. During these eighty-five years the region transformed from a sparsely settled area to the home of large industrial and commercial cities, including Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Detroit. Still, it remained primarily an agricultural region that promised a better life for many of the people who acquired la
Trade Review“No one has understood this highly complex region during this transformative nineteenth century better than Douglas Hurt, the dean of American agricultural historians. This book is of immense importance for scholars, specialists, and non-specialists alike. In this synthesis of the literature Hurt demonstrates his mastery of both the old agricultural history and the new rural history. It is a tour de force by any measure.”—David Vaught, author of
The Farmers’ Game: Baseball in Rural America“Douglas Hurt, one of the brightest lights in the expanding constellation of midwestern studies, has produced another classic by chronicling the foundational role of yeoman farming in the development of the American Midwest. It will be a critical text for the new midwestern history.”—Jon K. Lauck, editor in chief of
Middle West Review“No one knows more than Douglas Hurt about agriculture in the Midwest. Each of these chapters is replete with facts and insights that at once illuminate the region’s agricultural past and underscore its importance to American development more broadly in the nineteenth century. Hurt demonstrates a remarkable command of primary and secondary sources relating to the topics treated, and his historical judgment is fair and balanced. This book is authoritative and will prove of lasting value.”—Peter Coclanis, author of
The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670–1920Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Introduction
1. Seekers
2. Settlers
3. Graziers
4. Tinkerers
5. Utopians
6. Warriors
7. Colonizers
8. Educators
9. Farmers
10. Reformers
Epilogue
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
